UCSF ChimeraX is the next-generation visualization program from the Resource for Biocomputing, Visualization, and Informatics at UC San Francisco.
Compared to Chimera, ChimeraX has a more modern user interface, better graphics, and much faster handling of large structures. For more information, see:
ChimeraX has several completely new features compared to Chimera (see advantages), but not yet all of its commonly used capabilities. Most features are implemented as commands only, not (yet) as graphical interfaces, and missing features include dock prep, color key (except command in the daily build), saving and restoring scenes, independent centers of rotation, calculating axes for helices or other sets of atoms, “worms” to show residue attributes, modeling loops and missing segments, combine models, join models, trajectory analysis other than simple playback, calculating RMSD in the current position without fitting (except in the daily build), and many others. Chimera capabilities grew significantly over several years, and likewise, ChimeraX will contain more of these important features as development proceeds.
Although similar in many aspects, ChimeraX is not backward compatible with Chimera and does not read Chimera session files.
Production releases are stable platforms for ChimeraX Toolshed bundles to work with. You may need to use an older release if a bundle you wish to use has not been updated yet.
Operating System | Distribution | Notes |
---|---|---|
Windows 10 64-bit |
ChimeraX-1.1.exe built: 2020-09-10 21:31:12 PDT committed: 2020-09-09 15:22:27 PDT size: 300.2 MiB md5: 0bbf1dee03bb33ee71c2d930ce454794 sha256: 7fed35e29f498466c7559b6f357531ce4f3ed15b1663783b014713b196441460 |
Download is a Windows installer.
Tested on Windows 10. See Windows notes below. |
macOS 10.13 64-bit |
ChimeraX-1.1.1.dmg built: 2020-10-07 22:51:41 PDT committed: 2020-10-07 01:32:49 PDT size: 337.4 MiB md5: 32a908b72535aeeb4bcdbd8c9d3fff1a sha256: 2678efba1b11cd9400f2c432189e1b56ee73108f582c6427b13f7f0af5ed2cdb |
Download is a disk image containing the application.
Tested on macOS 10.13. Also works on 10.14, 10.15, and 11.0 (Big Sur). |
Generic Linux 64-bit |
ChimeraX-1.1.tar.gz built: 2020-09-10 21:42:44 PDT committed: 2020-09-09 15:22:27 PDT size: 390.9 MiB md5: a081f3b964aae69bf7e6f1b3bfc34e1d sha256: a5f8bc54e55bda7243d49953bf329731ffac173bcb8ca1ed0e55fbf917601bf5 |
Download is a tarball of the chimerax application directory.
ChimeraX executable is chimerax/bin/ChimeraX. See Linux notes below. |
Ubuntu 16.04 (Linux) 64-bit |
ucsf-chimerax_1.1_amd64.deb built: 2020-09-10 21:58:13 PDT committed: 2020-09-09 15:22:27 PDT size: 271.3 MiB md5: bb69600fcac7fa0034a75bfcb7579fb9 sha256: df06b0b04ce8bbca0a0716a32cc706e6b1c43396f936acbb9055edd05f44f35a |
Download is a Ubuntu 16.04 ucsf-chimerax package. Install on your personal computer with:
ChimeraX executable is /usr/bin/chimerax.
Ubuntu 16.04 is based on Debian 9, a.k.a. Stretch. |
Ubuntu 18.04 (Linux) 64-bit |
ucsf-chimerax_1.1_amd64.deb built: 2020-09-10 22:06:35 PDT committed: 2020-09-09 15:22:27 PDT size: 274.5 MiB md5: 2227c651dce8cc6ba061d4f7bf96ecc2 sha256: ec366053fbed539af09c8618cfab8c4d4c18ce8b58d921c77a81de550eb665f3 |
Download is a Ubuntu 18.04 ucsf-chimerax package. Install on your personal computer with:
ChimeraX executable is /usr/bin/chimerax.
Ubuntu 18.04 is based on Debian 10, a.k.a. Buster. |
Ubuntu 20.04 (Linux) 64-bit |
ucsf-chimerax_1.1_amd64.deb built: 2020-09-10 22:15:00 PDT committed: 2020-09-09 15:22:27 PDT size: 282.6 MiB md5: de1592c31383a099534cec925020562b sha256: 985e90e369ff8e4d609405947df2abc5815c1d02288317367dcc60841ef0b58e |
Download is a Ubuntu 20.04 ucsf-chimerax package. Install on your personal computer with:
ChimeraX executable is /usr/bin/chimerax.
Ubuntu 20.04 is based on Debian 11, a.k.a. Bullseye. |
Red Hat/CentOS 7 (Linux) 64-bit |
ucsf-chimerax-1.1-1.el7.x86_64.rpm built: 2020-09-10 22:25:50 PDT committed: 2020-09-09 15:22:27 PDT size: 280.6 MiB md5: 8724b392fda1c1c45dfb1ea081645f70 sha256: de18d84029ce896227224d10f49adb387bcee67a56be91d5b54fa64d27643716 |
Download is a CentOS/RHEL 7 ucsf-chimerax package. Install on your personal computer with:
ChimeraX executable is /usr/bin/chimerax.
|
Red Hat 8/CentOS 8/Fedora 28+ (Linux) 64-bit |
ucsf-chimerax-1.1-1.el8.x86_64.rpm built: 2020-09-10 22:35:11 PDT committed: 2020-09-09 15:22:27 PDT size: 269.0 MiB md5: 5d6ddf62cd7a5d96a825a9703a27edb4 sha256: f0981fe2c0101010690819ec40380e9a991b63b15589f25dc3b7e0c630bd2e68 |
Download is a CentOS/RHEL 8 ucsf-chimerax package. Install on your personal computer with:
ChimeraX executable is /usr/bin/chimerax.
|
Daily builds are generated automatically each night from the development source code (see the change log). While a given build may have unforeseen problems, these are often fixed by the next day. Daily builds are both a preview of the next production release and a testbed for prototyping new features and bug fixes.
Operating System | Distribution | Notes |
---|---|---|
Windows 10 64-bit |
fetching build information... |
Download is a Windows installer.
Tested on Windows 10. See Windows notes below. |
macOS 10.13 64-bit |
fetching build information... |
Download is a disk image containing the application.
Tested on macOS 10.13. Also works on 10.14, 10.15, and 11.0 (Big Sur). |
Generic Linux 64-bit |
fetching build information... |
Download is a tarball of the chimerax application directory.
ChimeraX executable is chimerax/bin/ChimeraX. See Generic Linux notes below. |
Ubuntu 16.04 (Linux) 64-bit |
fetching build information... |
Download is a Ubuntu 16.04 ucsf-chimerax-daily package. Install on your personal computer with:
ChimeraX executable is /usr/bin/chimerax-daily.
Ubuntu 16.04 is based on Debian 9, a.k.a. Stretch. |
Ubuntu 18.04 (Linux) 64-bit |
fetching build information... |
Download is a Ubuntu 18.04 ucsf-chimerax-daily package. Install on your personal computer with:
ChimeraX executable is /usr/bin/chimerax-daily.
Ubuntu 18.04 is based on Debian 10, a.k.a. Buster. |
Ubuntu 20.04 (Linux) 64-bit |
fetching build information... |
Download is a Ubuntu 20.04 ucsf-chimerax-daily package. Install on your personal computer with:
ChimeraX executable is /usr/bin/chimerax-daily.
Ubuntu 20.04 is based on Debian 11, a.k.a. Bullseye. |
Red Hat/CentOS 7 (Linux) 64-bit |
fetching build information... |
Download is a Red Hat/CentOS 7 ucsf-chimerax-daily package. Install on your personal computer with:
ChimeraX executable is /usr/bin/chimerax-daily.
|
Red Hat 8/CentOS 8/Fedora 28+ (Linux) 64-bit |
fetching build information... |
Download is a Red Hat/CentOS 8 ucsf-chimerax-daily package. Install on your personal computer with:
ChimeraX executable is /usr/bin/chimerax-daily.
|
Generic Linux Notes
The Generic Linux version does not run on Red Hat/CentOS 7,
for those you need to install the CentOS 7 rpm.
The Generic Linux version of ChimeraX is compiled on Debian 8 using gcc 4.9.
In past, it has worked on newer versions of Ubuntu (≥ 16.04) and Fedora (≥ 25),
but that is not regularly tested.
Running the generic version will probably
require additional libraries and/or older versions of libraries to be installed.
Windows Notes
ChemOffice 2002 supplies an ancient version of the OpenGL library that
prevents ChimeraX from starting up.
To fix it, you'll need to remove or rename its opengl32.dll
file;
typically found in "C:\Program Files (x86)\ChemOffice2002\Common\DLLs\opengl32.dll"
.