How to Keep Your Molecular Labels Clear at Any Zoom Level

When working on complex molecular models, clear and informative labeling is essential. But what happens when your scene becomes crowded, or when you zoom in and out frequently to explore different scales of your system?

With SAMSON, labels can be made to appear or disappear automatically depending on the zoom level, helping you control visual clutter without losing essential information. In this post, we’ll explore how to adjust label visibility based on zoom level and radius in SAMSON, ensuring your workspace stays clean and readable no matter how large or detailed your system is.

Why label visibility matters

Imagine you’re working on a large biomolecular structure. If every atom, residue, or molecule had its label visible at all times, your viewport might quickly become a dense cloud of overlapping text. SAMSON solves this by dynamically adjusting label visibility depending on zoom level and object size. But you also have precise tools to refine this behavior.

Automatic visibility adjustments

By default, SAMSON adapts label visibility based on the zoom level:

  • Zooming in will reveal more detailed labels, such as atoms and bonds.
  • Zooming out will fade smaller elements’ labels and emphasize larger structures like molecules.

This smart default ensures readability, but you can take further control using the Inspector panel.

Manually setting when a label appears

You can fine-tune the visibility range of any label by setting its minimum and maximum display radii. Here’s how:

  1. Select a label in your system, either through the Viewport (make sure you’ve set the Selection Filter to “Labels”) or the Document view.
  2. Open the Inspector panel.
  3. You’ll find settings for Display radius—specifically Minimum and Maximum display radius.
  4. Adjust these values to control the zoom levels at which the label is visible.

This allows, for instance, a label attached to an atom to appear only when you’re zoomed in enough to examine atomic-level details.

Visual example

In the animation below, you can see how labels automatically fade in and out as you zoom the scene in SAMSON:

Changes in the visibility of labels when zooming in/out in the Viewport

This behavior can be fully customized. Want a specific label to always be visible, regardless of zoom? Set a wide display radius. Want it to only show at high zoom levels? Set both min and max display radii accordingly.

Turning labels on or off manually

You can also toggle individual label visibility manually in the Document view by ticking or unticking labels. This is useful when preparing illustrations or presentations that need specific visual focus.

Hide/show labels using the Document view

Final thoughts

Getting the level of detail right is key when working with large molecular systems. With SAMSON’s label visibility settings, you don’t have to choose between completeness and clarity—you can have both.

To learn more, visit the full labeling documentation.

SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON here.

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