When working with molecular models, making consistent changes across multiple atoms, bonds, or residues can be tedious and error-prone. Whether you’re adjusting atom positions, reassigning element types, or updating other attributes, repeating the same modification individually is inefficient. If you’ve found yourself stuck updating multiple atoms manually and worrying about messing up your structure, you’re not alone. Thankfully, the Inspector in SAMSON offers a solution.
The Inspector allows you to select one or more nodes (atoms, residues, molecules, etc.) and view—and often modify—their properties. What makes it particularly powerful is the ability to edit attributes for multiple nodes at once while controlling how these changes apply in relation to each other.
Modifying Positions Safely
Say you’ve selected a group of atoms and want to shift their positions slightly, perhaps to refine a docking pose or adjust a side chain. With the Inspector, you can do this in a controlled way using the Relative checkbox.
If Relative is checked, all atoms shift together, keeping their internal coordinates unchanged—useful when you want to move a fragment without altering its shape.
Uncheck Relative, and all selected atoms will be set to the same position value—handy if you want multiple atoms to span from the same location (not common, but useful in special cases).
Crucially, these changes are reversible thanks to SAMSON’s history mechanism, which lets you undo/redo actions easily.
Filtering: When You Only Care About One Thing
Have you ever tried to update an atom’s position but couldn’t find it in a cluttered attribute list? Use the filter bar at the top of the Inspector. Simply begin typing, e.g., position, and the Inspector will display only the relevant attributes.
This can save time when dealing with complex selections where each node has dozens of attributes.
Interactive Tweaks and Visual Feedback
When you edit position attributes by typing in new values, you’ll see your selection move in real time. This interactive feedback makes it easier to experiment and see immediate results—whether you’re positioning ligands or nudging backbone atoms during model refinement.
Wrap-Up
These Inspector features address a common challenge in molecular modeling: making bulk edits confidently and efficiently. Whether you’re repositioning atoms or modifying attributes across many nodes, the Inspector gives you control and flexibility—along with a very useful safety net thanks to the undo history.
Learn more in the full documentation.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.