Ever added a label in SAMSON, only to find it mysteriously vanish as you zoom in or out? You’re not alone. Label visibility in SAMSON is a common point of confusion for molecular modelers, especially when preparing clear, informative visualizations of complex systems. This post helps you understand how label visibility works—and how to take control of it.
The Problem: Labels that Vanish
At first, everything seems fine. You add a label to a molecule, atom, or residue, perhaps to document a binding site, a key distance, or a structural annotation. 🎯 But then you zoom out to take in the full model—or zoom in to focus on a substructure—and your label disappears.
This is not a bug. It’s a feature. And it’s actually one that, when understood, can clean up your visualizations and help you focus on the right level of detail.
The Concept: Display Radius
In SAMSON, each label has associated minimum and maximum display radii. These set the scale range over which the label is shown in the Viewport. Zooming in increases the camera scale; zooming out decreases it. When your current zoom level is outside of the display radius bounds, the label is hidden.
This dynamic visibility is useful: it means labels for small details (atoms or residues) won’t clutter your screen when you’re looking at the overall structure—but it also means some labels won’t always be visible.
How to Control Label Visibility
To make sure your label appears (or stays hidden) at the right levels of zoom, follow these steps:
- Select the label either in the Document view or directly in the Viewport. Make sure your selection filter is set to “Labels” so it’s detectable.
- Open the Inspector panel.
- Locate the “Display radius” settings. These let you adjust the minimum and maximum radii outside of which the label disappears.
- Edit the values if you want the label to show up (or disappear) at different zoom levels.
Tip: If you’re preparing visuals for a presentation or paper where label consistency is key, you might want to increase the visibility range of a label to make sure it’s always present regardless of zoom.
Complementary Tip: Visibility Toggling
Sometimes, you want manual control. In that case, you can toggle visibility directly:
- In the Document view, tick/untick a label’s checkbox to show or hide it.
Conclusion
With a clear understanding of how display radii affect label visibility, you can avoid confusion and improve the clarity of your molecular designs in SAMSON. Whether fine-tuning a figure or building a dynamic model, knowing when and where your labels appear puts you in full control.
To learn more about labels in SAMSON, explore the full documentation here: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/labeling/
Note: SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.