Hi VR, I'll just mention some related ideas that may help: (1) There is a "center" mouse mode (assign to some button with the mousemode command) to center the view on the clicked atom, bond, ribbon segment, or surface point <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/ui.html#mousemode> (2) The "view" command allows focusing the view on specified objects, namely centering them and adjusting the zoom so that they fit in the window. If you don't want these items to fill the window you can just zoom downward afterwards. There are also icons in the Graphics tab of the toolbar to focus the view on current selection, or collectively on everything that is displayed when the icon is clicked. Focusing the view with the "view" command is approximate centering, because it is based on the bounding box of items. <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/view.html> <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/tools/graphics.html> <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/zoom.html> (3) The "view" command also has a "zalign" option where you can specify items to align front to back (along screen Z axis) in the XY center of the window, as well as a mutually exclusive "orient" option to align scene coordinates with screen coordinates. See "view" help link above. (4) Showing the Side View (e.g. choosing it from the Tools menu or opening by clicking an icon in the Graphics tab of the toolbar) may help in getting the desired rotational orientation and position. <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/tools/sideview.html> (5) if you find that perspective projection is distorting the view and obscuring symmetry when items are not perfectly centered, you can switch to orthographic projection instead with command "camera ortho" -- I find this particularly helpful for images of side-by-side comparisons. <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/camera.html> (6) for precise movements left/right/up/down you can use the "move" command with angstrom values (screen X = left/right, Y = up/down). <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/move.html> (7) Of course, after you save an image from ChimeraX, you could crop it in some image-editing program like Gimp that can show ruler lines, if you really need that kind of mathematical precision. I hope this helps, Elaine ----- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Chimera(X) team Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco

On Aug 28, 2023, at 11:55 PM, Vytautas Raškevičius via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:

Hi It would be nice to have camera viewfinder to make images. Like here: https://expertphotography.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Viewfinder-ve...

So it would be much easier to put something in center exactly and so.

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