[Chimera-users] saving partial coordinates

[Elaine Meng]

  Hi Mark,
In the current release of Chimera: if you are on a non-Windows system,
you can use the command "pdbrun" to save just the atoms that are displayed.
You can see the manual page for this command by typing "help pdbrun" 
in the Chimera Command Line (by default, Favorites...  Command Line).

example:
   pdbrun nouser cat > myzone.pdb

Pdbrun literally sends the information for only the displayed atoms
in their displayed positions to another command, in this case "cat"
to send the information to the file myzone.pdb.  If you want the coordinates
to be the same as in the original file, first use the command "reset."  All
the atoms should be in view (i.e. if you are zoomed in and the atoms around
the periphery cannot be seen in the Chimera window, they won't be in your
output file either).

The command "save" (or File... Save Session As... ) doesn't save coordinates,
only how they are positioned/colored/displayed, etc.  In fact, restarting
a saved session will use the original input file(s) for coordinates.
The command "write" (same as the function "write PDB" in the Model Panel)
saves coordinates into a file.  However, these will save the entire coordinates
whether displayed or not.

If you are on Windows, I am not aware of a solution in the current release.
In our working version and thus the next release (late summer or early
fall, I believe) there is a delete action.  This would allow you to select
the atoms/bonds outside a zone, for example, and then actually delete them.
(Actions... Atoms/Bonds... delete).  Subsequently, a file created with
"write" would only contain the atoms/bonds that had not been deleted.
   
I hope this helps,
  Elaine
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Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D.
Computer Graphics Lab and Babbitt Lab
meng at cgl.ucsf.edu
http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/meng/index.html
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