Why Named Cameras Can Save You Hours in Molecular Modeling Projects

When working on complex molecular systems in SAMSON and building dynamic scenes with multiple views, it is not unusual to end up with several camera nodes storing different viewpoints. A common frustration among molecular modelers is locating the right camera in a crowded document — especially when cameras are unnamed or generically labeled. If you’ve ever found yourself clicking through dozens of unnamed camera nodes, trying to remember which one shows that perfect angle of your protein-ligand complex, this post is for you.

Fortunately, SAMSON’s Node Specification Language (NSL) makes it easy to identify and filter cameras using logical queries. More specifically, the camera attribute space (ca) provides a set of attributes that help you locate and work with camera nodes in an efficient way.

Using Camera Names to Your Advantage

Each camera node in SAMSON can have a name. This might seem like a minor detail, but it’s incredibly helpful when managing large projects. You can assign meaningful names like "TopView" or "BindingPocket" to remember what the camera shows. Later, you can run queries such as:

This will match all cameras whose name is exactly “TopView”.

Even better, wildcard searches are supported, allowing you to query by partial matches. For example:

This will match any camera whose name starts with “Lig”, such as LigandView1 or LigBindingPocket.

Quick Selection with Logical Queries

Sometimes you just want to find out which cameras are currently selected or not. This is where the selected attribute becomes useful. Try queries like:

This returns all selected camera nodes.

On the other hand, the inverse selection is just as simple:

Understanding selectionFlag

There’s also the selectionFlag attribute (short name sf), which can indicate selection states in broader handling. Querying with:

can be useful if you’re trying to isolate cameras that haven’t been targeted yet in automated scripts or tools within SAMSON.

Why It Matters in Practice

These query mechanisms might seem small, but in practice, they drastically reduce time spent manually browsing the Document Explorer. Whether you’re creating figures, preparing animations, or revisiting previous viewpoints, structured naming and smart querying can keep your workflow organized and predictable.

Additionally, if you’re creating tutorials, reports, or presentations, having identifiable and retrievable cameras ensures consistency and avoids the frustration of re-finding that perfect view you had three weeks ago.

Summary

• Use ca.n to query named cameras with exact or wildcard expressions.
• Use ca.selected or not ca.selected to filter by selection state.
• Use ca.sf to check or filter based on selection flags.

This small set of functions can have a big impact on your ability to manage views and streamline your modeling process.

To learn more about camera attributes in NSL, visit the official documentation page here.

SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.