B2: How to change the center of rotation.

When a molecule is first displayed in Chime the center of rotation is the center of mass of the molecule. If you want to view the entire molecule this is where it should be. However, you may want to zoom into a small region of the protein (e.g. the active site of an enzyme). If you then try to rotate the molecule, the region of interest may rotate out of view. To avoid this you can redefine the center of rotation.

You need to open the pop-up menu by moving the arrow over "MDL" in the window containing the structure and depress the RIGHT mouse button. Select the following set of options: Select¬Mouse Click Action¬Pick Center of Rotation. As you go through these steps the menus should appear as shown below the chime window (lower left of the frame). Now, move the arrow to point to the atom that you want to be the new center of rotation and depress the LEFT mouse button. The atom that you clicked on will be the new center of rotation. What you have done by the above actions is to redefine the mouse action. After defining the new center of rotation you probably want to reset the mouse to the default action, i.e. identification of the atom picked. Click here to learn how to do this.