Mistakes happen 🧬. Whether you’re exploring a new protein conformation, editing a reaction intermediate, or simply rearranging atoms in your molecular design, it’s easy to misclick and lose a key step. Fortunately, SAMSON offers a dedicated History view feature that lets you undo and redo changes within a molecular document — often saving hours of work and frustration.
Here’s how the History view in SAMSON helps molecular modelers stay in control of their workflow — and how you can take full advantage of it.
Why history tracking matters in molecular modeling
Anyone working with molecular systems knows how unpredictable modeling workflows can be. You’re adding bonds, optimizing geometries, running simulations — all in a few clicks. If you realize something went wrong two or three steps ago, what then?
Reconstructing a lost molecular state is not only tedious, but can introduce human error. SAMSON addresses this by giving each document its own local history: a sequence of user actions you can backtrack or replay.
This is especially useful when:
- You accidentally delete part of a structure
- You want to compare two conformations created during modeling
- You need to explain a modification to a collaborator or student
- You just want to test something without the fear of losing work
Opening the History view
You can access the History view in two ways:
- Via the menu:
Interface > History - With shortcut: Ctrl + 3 on Windows/Linux, or Cmd + 3 on macOS
The History view displays a chronological list of actions within the current molecular document. Each entry represents a modification that may be undone or redone individually.
How to use undo and redo effectively
Once the History view is open, you can:
- Click on a previous action to revert to the document state that followed it
- Use keyboard shortcuts:
- Undo: Ctrl + Z or Cmd + Z
- Redo: Ctrl + Y or Cmd + Y
Going through these actions visually helps you understand the evolution of your model — almost like a version timeline.
One important caveat
It’s good to know that not all operations are fully undoable. Some actions — especially extensions or simulations that don’t register as atomic document changes — might break the continuity of the undo chain.
If such non-undoable steps are introduced between undoable ones, you could lose the ability to go back to specific earlier document states. For this reason, it’s wise to regularly save versions or snapshots of complex systems, especially before launching tasks like minimizations or docking simulations.
In summary
The History view in SAMSON is more than just an undo button — it’s a timeline of your modeling process, giving you peace of mind and making molecular design safer and more transparent. If you’ve ever lost work inside a modeling tool and struggled to recreate it, you’ll likely appreciate this simple but powerful feature.
Explore the full documentation here: 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.