Molecular modeling software can quickly become overwhelming when juggling multiple tools. If you’re working with molecular structures in SAMSON, you might have noticed a particular design choice: only one editor can be active at a time. This might seem limiting at first, but it’s intentionally designed for clarity and efficiency.
Editors in SAMSON handle user interactions—like mouse clicks or keyboard shortcuts. Each editor listens for these events to do specific things: some let you create nanotubes, others deform molecular shapes carefully, and some perform standard tasks like selection or rigid-body transformations.
Allowing only one active editor ensures that your mouse click is interpreted the right way. For example, selecting an atom vs. deforming a molecule vs. drawing a nanotube all begin with a simple click—but they shouldn’t interfere with each other.
How to Find and Switch Editors
To help you quickly switch tasks, SAMSON offers several convenient ways to enable a different editor:
- Viewport Menu: On the left side of the viewport, you’ll find your list of available editors. Just click the one you want, and it becomes the sole active editor.
- Quick Access Corner: In the top-left corner of the viewport, there are commands that correspond to the active editor. This corner gives you quick access to actions specific to that editor.
- Search Bar: Use the Find everything box at the top of the SAMSON interface to locate any editor by name, especially if you’ve downloaded additional ones from SAMSON Connect.
Working with Specialized Editors
Say you’re generating a nanotube structure. You’ll want to use an editor purpose-built for that task, which becomes your active editor as soon as you launch it. Then, if you decide to select a region or apply a transformation, you switch to a different editor tailored for that interaction. This helps isolate each modeling step and prevents accidental changes or overlapping behaviors.
Less Guesswork, More Control
This one-editor-at-a-time setup gives you a clear mental model of what the system will do in response to your actions. It removes the guesswork and reduces the number of unwanted operations—especially useful when working on high-precision molecular design tasks.
If you’re developing your own editors, this model also simplifies how user input is handled in your code. Only the active editor needs to process interactions, reducing unexpected behavior and making development more straightforward. Learn more about making your own editors on the SAMSON Extension Generator page.
To explore the full set of built-in and downloadable editors, check out the original documentation at https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/editors/.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can get SAMSON here.