Move & Rotate

Moving molecule(s)

Molecules can be freely translated, rotated and resized. The most natural way to do it is using the mouse. The effect will depend upon the tool currently selected. Tools are located at the top of the display window. The selected tool appear in inverse video, and the shape of the cursor is affected by the current active tool.
tools window translate, resize and rotate tools (rotate being active tool)

You can switch among these tools with "Tab" (or shift-Tab) key, providing the display window is currently active (i.e. the frontmost window).

Special features

When either the translate tool or the rotate tool are active, the translation or (rotation) can be constrained around the x, y, or z using key modifiers:

X
Y
Z
MAC
Control
Option
Command
PC
F5
F6
F7

Note: if a little earth icon is shown below the first tool, the rotation takes place in absolute coordinates. Otherwise (little protein icon) molecules are rotated around their centrotid. Hence the first option allows you to rotate the molecule around any atom, providing that this atom has previously been centered (translated to the (0,0,0) coordinate). Refer to the tools section to know how to do that.

More Special features

  • It is possible to move a molecule (layer) independently of an other by disabling the "can move" check box of the molecule currently accessible in the control window. You can also click in the "mov" column of the Layer Infos Windows
  • It is possible to move only a subpart of the molecule, such as one helix, or a substraste. Click on the "Move All" text, which appears under the three moving tools of the main window. The text will change to "Move Selection". In this mode, only selected groups will move. As usual, you can constrain the translation or the rotation along a specific axiswith the keys modifiers mentionned above.Do not forget to switch back to the normal mode after having moved what you wanted to move (immediately use the undo item of the edit menu if you did something weird!).
    Note: it might be a good idea to center the view onto a specific atom of the group you want to rotate!
  • Fitting molecules
    It is a very useful displacement that is described in the tools section.