When working with complex molecular systems, clarity is everything. Whether you’re presenting your work, creating a figure for publication, or simply trying to keep track of various distances or angles, the ability to visually tailor the appearance of your annotations can make a huge difference in understanding or communication.
SAMSON, the integrative platform for molecular modeling, offers a simple but powerful feature: measurement labels that can be fully customized. These include bond lengths, distances, angles, and torsions — and you can modify not only the textual contents but also their appearance, including font, color, and offset.
Why appearance matters
If you’re juggling multiple labels inside a dense molecular system, the default visualization may work at first — but soon, the labels can become overwhelming or easy to confuse. Customization helps you:
- Distinguish between different types of measurements at a glance
- Highlight key interactions (e.g., hydrogen bonds, torsions)
- Prepare cleaner visuals for presentations or publications
- Improve accessibility (e.g., color visibility issues)
How to customize measurement labels in SAMSON
Once you’ve measured a distance or angle and saved it as a label (just press Enter after a measurement), you can edit its style from the Inspector panel:
1. Changing label text and line colors
In the Inspector, scroll to see parameters like:
- Text color: Choose the color of the label text
- Line color: Color of the distance/angle line that connects atoms
- Angle color or Planes color: Especially useful for highlighting angles or torsions
To return to the default settings, just double-click on the color label or click the X icon next to the color input field.
2. Customizing fonts
Fonts can be adjusted directly in the Inspector. For each label, you can:
- Select a new font family
- Adjust font size to improve legibility
If you want to set a default font style that will be applied to all labels where no font has been manually set, head to Preferences > Rendering > Labels.
Quick tips
- Use contrasting colors when labels overlap with dense molecular regions.
- Apply consistent styling conventions (e.g., red for hydrogen bonds) for better readability.
- Preview the model at your expected publication zoom level to choose appropriate font sizes.
These small adjustments can go a long way in making your models easier to interpret — for you and your colleagues.
To learn more about measurement customization and related features, visit the official SAMSON documentation.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON from https://www.samson-connect.net.