What is ChemDraw?
ChemDraw is a specialized software application used to draw and edit chemical structures and reactions. It allows chemists, biologists, and other scientists to create publication-quality drawings of molecules, chemical reaction mechanisms, biopolymers, chemical process flow diagrams, and other schematics commonly used in the chemistry field.
Some key features of ChemDraw include:
- An intuitive user interface for drawing chemical structures with tools for adding atoms, bonds, text labels, arrows, and more.
- Extensive chemical intelligence for predicting structures, naming compounds, calculating properties, and checking for chemical validity.
- A library of templates for common rings, linkers, monomers, and groups to facilitate drawing biomolecules and polymers.
- Tools for calculating molecular properties and analyzing spectra.
- Functionality for planning multi-step synthetic routes and reaction mechanisms.
- Capabilities for graphing spectroscopic data and customizing plots.
- Options to export drawings into various file formats for use in presentations, publications, and web pages.
ChemDraw is published by PerkinElmer Informatics, and has become the de facto standard software used to draw chemical structures amongst chemists, biochemists, and biologists both in industry and academia. Its intuitive interface, time-saving tools, and chemical intelligence system make it an essential application for anyone who needs to draw, analyze, or communicate chemical information.
ACD/ChemSketch, Chemaxon Marvin, MollyCule, JChemPaint, Gnome Chemistry Utils, ChemDoodle, BKchem, XDrawChem, Chemik, ChemistryLab, MedChem Designer, ChemJuice Grande are some alternatives to ChemDraw.