[Chimera-users] Export of small molecule in ball-and-stick form to VRML

[Tom Goddard]

Hi Aaron,

  When I export a ball and stick model as X3D from Chimera 1.14 it reads correctly by Shapeways (www.shapeways.com <http://www.shapeways.com/>), the 3D printing company, showing all sticks and balls and colors.  When I uploaded VRML to Shapeways it lost about 10% of the bonds -- probably something weird about them not contacting the spheres due to floating point finite precision.  So I suspect the problem you have with X3D is with the software you are using to read the file.  Don't use OBJ because that uses textures for colors and Chimera does not produce the textures, so it will not have the coloring.

  Here are the commands I used for my test

	open 1a0m
	display ~solvent
	~ribbon
	repr bs
	export ~/Desktop/test.x3d
	export ~/Desktop/test.wrl

  Tom


> On Dec 13, 2019, at 8:37 AM, Bickel, Aaron <aaron.bickel at novartis.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I have successfully used Chimera many times to export 3D-printable STL files from small and large molecules. However, when I try to export a ball-and-stick small molecule scene to a file type with color information to print in color (such as X3D, OBJ, or VRML) the resulting file only has the sticks shown and none of the balls. This seems to be replicated across any molecule that I try to export. In general my process is to import a PDB file, visualize as ball and stick through the Actions menu, and then use the Model Panel Attributes menu to adjust the thickness of the balls and sticks to ensure a strong physical structure. Is there an additional step I am missing to export as VRML/X3D/OBJ?
>  
> Thank you,
> Aaron
>  
>  
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