Every molecular modeler has been there: after hours of careful edits, one wrong click sends your molecular system into disarray. Accidentally deleting a molecule, misplacing an atom, or erasing a key interaction can be frustrating—especially when you can’t remember exactly what changed. Fortunately, SAMSON provides an intuitive and powerful history mechanism that can help you navigate back and forth through your work.
This blog post explores SAMSON’s Undo and Redo features—simple tools that can be the difference between workflow disruption and creative efficiency.
🔄 How Does the History System Work?
Each document in SAMSON maintains its own history: a timeline of your actions that is stored locally. This means you can undo and redo edits sequentially without affecting other open documents.
To access your document’s history, open the History view by navigating to Interface > History, or use the shortcut:
- Ctrl + 3 on Windows/Linux
- Cmd + 3 on Mac
Within the History view, you’ll see a list of your previously performed actions. Each entry corresponds to a specific operation, such as atom creation, force field application, conformational changes, and more. By clicking on any entry, you can instantly revert the document to that exact state.
⏪ Undo and ⏩ Redo from the Menu or Keyboard
Prefer using the menu or keyboard? SAMSON supports standard Undo/Redo shortcuts:
- Undo:
Ctrl + Z(Windows/Linux)Cmd + Z(Mac)- Redo:
Ctrl + Y(Windows/Linux)Cmd + Y(Mac)
This makes it easy to continuously refine your designs without worrying about making permanent mistakes.
🚧 A Few Limitations Worth Knowing
While SAMSON’s History is flexible, it’s important to understand its boundaries. Not every operation is undoable. For example, some plugin actions or system-level changes may not be included in the undo stack.
Note: If a non-undoable action is performed between undoable steps, it may prevent SAMSON from properly returning to previous states. This can lead to unexpected behavior or loss of intermediate work.
A good habit is to periodically save your document under versioned names (e.g., model_v1.samx, model_v2.samx) so you can always go back if needed.
🧭 Navigating Quickly and Safely
The visual approach to managing history not only helps in correcting errors, but also facilitates exploration. Want to compare different geometries or pre- and post-optimization states? Jumping through the History view is much more intuitive than recalling what was changed and manually rebuilding.
Working with molecular models often involves complex sequences of actions. The ability to precisely control which step you’re on is instrumental to both speed and confidence while designing, simulating, or analyzing molecular systems.
If you want to spend more time innovating and less time retracing your steps, take a few minutes to explore the History feature in your next SAMSON project. You might find that a simple click on an earlier state saves hours of do-over work.
To learn more and explore additional details, visit the official documentation page: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/history/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net