The purpose of this Chimera extension is to add functionality to deal with real-life units and manage scaling with the main application being for 3D printing.
Features current and planned are as follows:
Current-------
Real-life unit scaling: the extension provides functionality to automatically or manually determine the dpi of the monitor being used. This establishes a relationship between the actual size that a model is displayed to the user and the units used by Chimera. This can be used to show a ruler or grid and provides a basis for other features.
Planned-------
Real-life unit export: the extension provides functionality to export the model at it's currently displayed size in actual real-life units such as inches or cm which can be selected when importing the model into whatever 3D printing software being used.
Real-life unit style editing: the extension provides functionality to set the width and thickness for various style settings such as strut thickness, ribbon styles, ball-and-stick thickness, etc. The user can choose to rescale the overall size of the model while these style settings stay constant. This is useful when a certain thickness is desired to determine how big to make the overall size so that the model does not appear crowded.