For many molecular modelers, integrating custom algorithms, visualization styles, or workflows into a simulation platform can be a major challenge. Whether you’ve created a new force field, designed a specific selection tool, or wish you could automate certain tasks across large systems, extending your modeling environment becomes essential. Fortunately, SAMSON offers a modular and highly adaptable way to do just that.
This post introduces how molecular modelers can develop and distribute their own modules—called SAMSON Extensions—using the SAMSON Software Development Kit (SDK). If you’ve ever felt limited by out-of-the-box functionalities in molecular modeling software, this guide may be what you need to turn your ideas into working tools.
Why Customize SAMSON?
SAMSON’s open architecture is designed with flexibility in mind. Out of the box, it comes preloaded with a basic set of extensions, but you can add others to support your research needs. These modules span categories such as:
- Editors – for user interaction tools like geometry manipulation
- Interaction models – to compute forces and energies
- Apps – connect to web services or third-party code
- Visual models – create new ways to represent molecular data
- Importers/Exporters – parse, read, or save various file formats
If you don’t find what you need in the marketplace—or if you’re developing something uniquely suited to your field—developing your own extension becomes the logical next step.
How Do You Start?
To begin building a SAMSON Extension, you’ll need to install the SAMSON SDK. You can download it by signing into your SAMSON Connect account and navigating to the Downloads section.
The SDK gives you templates and mechanisms to create a variety of components such as new editors, visual styles, even entire apps or force fields. It supports the creation of:
- Standalone algorithms (e.g., custom energy calculations)
- Interactive tools (e.g., geometry editing widgets)
- Visualization modules (e.g., isosurface renderings)
Once developed, extensions can be shared publicly, or monetized via subscription. For example, suppose you’ve developed a novel Monte Carlo method: you can package it as a SAMSON Extension and offer it to others through SAMSON Connect.
Publishing and Distribution
Developers can distribute their own SAMSON Extensions via SAMSON Connect – Marketplace. The platform provides options for free distribution or paid subscriptions, with flexible pricing tiers for academia and industry. Monetization payments are handled via Stripe, keeping the setup relatively straightforward.
Full deployment is seamless; your extension is automatically compatible with SAMSON’s multiplatform environment, ensuring it can run wherever SAMSON is installed.
A Focus on Your Expertise
What sets SAMSON’s extensibility apart is that it allows developers to focus on what matters: the science. The SDK manages rendering, user interface integration, and document structure, freeing you up to build features specific to your domain knowledge.
Whether you work in drug design, biomolecular simulation, materials science, or another field, extensions enable you to bring your specialized tools into a collaborative modeling environment.
To get started, check out the documentation on extending SAMSON. There, you’ll find links to the Developer Guide and more detailed examples on building from templates, testing, and deploying.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. Learn more and get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.