As a molecular modeler, you often juggle multiple structures, simulations, and scripts. It’s easy to lose track of what’s where—especially when your work involves complex molecular assemblies. That’s where SAMSON’s Document view comes in. Designed to manage your entire project in a structured, visual way, the Document view is a powerful feature you may already be using without unlocking its full potential.
This blog post walks you through how the Document view can help you stay organized while modeling, editing, and analyzing molecular systems in SAMSON more efficiently.
What is the Document View?
In SAMSON, a document consists of a hierarchy of nodes—molecules, atoms, residues, groups, scripts, files, cameras, even Python scripts. The Document view exposes this structure so you can interact with each element directly.
Think of it like a file explorer for your molecular design project. You can:
- Visualize the graph structure of your document
- Show or hide nodes quickly
- Select nodes for further analysis (learn more)
- Use filters to quickly find what you need via SAMSON’s Node Specification Language (NSL)
- Drag and drop nodes to restructure your document
- Access context-specific actions for each node
Solving a Common Modeling Pain: Document Overload
Have you ever mixed up two similar molecules or lost track of where a custom script was attached? The Document view helps avoid these pitfalls by centralizing and visualizing all the pieces of your document. Even more useful—you can open multiple documents simultaneously, view their structures independently, and switch between them using the top-left Documents menu or Home > Documents.
This makes it a breeze to copy structures from one document to another or run different tasks in parallel.
Don’t Miss the Shortcuts
If you’re a shortcut fan, you’ll be glad to know you can access the Document view instantly using:
- Windows/Linux:
Ctrl + 1 - Mac:
Cmd + 1
Cycle through opened documents with Ctrl + Tab and Ctrl + Shift + Tab (Mac: Cmd + Tab and Cmd + Shift + Tab) to quickly navigate your work environment.
Collaboration and Backups Made Easier
Each document can embed its own folders and files, so everything you need—scripts, data files, even PDFs—can stay together. This means you can easily transfer documents between machines or collaborators without worrying about missing files. When you open the Document view, you can also see how many documents are currently open—a small but helpful detail for multi-document workflows.
Wrap-Up
If you haven’t used the Document view much (or at all), try opening it on your next SAMSON session. Whether you’re building a complex molecular machine or running simple simulations, the Document view lets you stay organized, efficient, and in control.
To learn more, visit the original documentation page: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/documents/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download the platform at https://www.samson-connect.net.