There are two ways to show those patches in ChimeraX without using a separate drawing program. One is just by coloring. The only way I can think of to do an outline, however, is by selection. You can change the color of the selection outline and its width, but you can only have one of those at a time, not several different outlines in different colors as shown in your example image.

I attach two example images, each with patch coloring on the left and selection outline on the right. First is the default green selection and second is with a fatter white line obtained with command "graphics selection color white width 4"

To make this example I opened 1zik, split into two models, deleted solvent. I selected the interface atoms using:

contacts /a restrict /b sel true log true intersubmodel true

<https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/clashes.html>

...and then colored the chain B contacts and deselected them using:

color sel & /b yellow targ s
~sel #1.2

... and then used the "move picked models" mouse mode to rotate and translate the chains separately (they were in two different models because of the previous split command) so that the interfaces were toward the viewer.

I hope this helps,
Elaine

-----
Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D.
UCSF Chimera(X) team
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
University of California, San Francisco

On Sep 9, 2021, at 1:25 PM, Zhao, Bingchun (NIH/VRC) [F] via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:

Hi,

I wonder if there is a way to outline the interface region in ChimeraX like below:

<image001.png>

Previously, I did this in photoshop, but can we label the interface regions with those lines in ChimeraX?

Thank you very much!
Bingchun