[PyMOL] ribbon trace, visualizing polymers (resent)

[Erik N. <nel...@gm...>]

I use pymol to generate images of simple polymers by loading their
coordinates as
.pdb files. The 'polymer .pdb' files contain only alpha carbon coordinates.
I connect
them using the ribbon_trace option, and color them by varying b-factors in
the .pdb
file.

I had created many different movies and figures this way, and I saved the
sessions
as .pse files. Just recently, I went back to view some of these sessions
and they just
loaded as blank screens.

I tried creating more images as before - using the ribbon_trace option to
connect the
atoms - but it no longer works.

I'm pretty sure I didn't change any options in pymol, so I'm wondering if
pymol
somehow updated itself, or some update of my mac airbook affected the pymol
program. Neither of these seems very likely.

What went wrong? Is there a way I can fix this?

A more general question. It seems like there must be a better way to
visualise a
polymer, say as a ball an stick image. Is there a more straight forward way
of doing
this in pymol?

Thanks, Erik

-- 
Erik Nelson

Howard Hughes Medical Institute
6001 Forest Park Blvd., Room ND10.124
Dallas, Texas 75235-9050

p : 214 645 5981
f : 214 645 5948