Surface Zone Surface Zone icon

Surface Zone restricts the display of certain surfaces to zones around selected atoms. Surface Zone acts on:

(but not standard molecular surfaces). For volume isosurfaces, it is more efficient to use the the zoning capability in Volume Viewer, which limits contouring calculations to the region containing the zone. Surface Zone information is included in saved sessions.

There are several ways to start Surface Zone, a tool in the Surface/Binding Analysis category. The Surface of interest should be chosen from the list of available surface models. Surfaces from Multiscale Models will be named for the PDB file from which the surfaces were generated.

Clicking Zone limits the display of the chosen surface to areas within a specified distance (Radius) of the currently selected atoms, if any. Surfaces are composed of triangles; only triangles with all three vertices in the zone will be shown. The Radius can be adjusted by moving the slider or typing in a new value and pressing return (Enter). If the set of selected atoms is changed, Zone must be clicked again to move the zone accordingly. Otherwise, the zone will remain centered on the formerly selected atoms. Clicking Zone will not update the surface display when no atoms are selected. No Zone unlimits the display of the chosen surface model (shows the entire surface).

Close dismisses the dialog, and Help opens this manual page in a browser window.

LIMITATION

Does not work with molecular surfaces. The Surface Zone tool does not work with molecular surfaces (those generated with the Surface section of the Actions menu or the command surface). This is because individual vertices in such surfaces cannot be hidden and shown, only entire atom-associated patches.


UCSF Computer Graphics Laboratory / December 2005