ChemDoodle

ChemDoodle

ChemDoodle is an open-source chemical drawing software for creating 2D chemical structures and animations. It provides user-friendly tools for drawing organic molecules, inorganic complexes, polymers, Markush structures, and more.
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ChemDoodle: Open-Source Chemical Drawing Software

ChemDoodle is an open-source chemical drawing software for creating 2D chemical structures and animations. It provides user-friendly tools for drawing organic molecules, inorganic complexes, polymers, Markush structures, and more.

What is ChemDoodle?

ChemDoodle is open-source software for creating interactive 2D and 3D chemical molecule structures and visualizations. It allows chemists, students, researchers, and other professionals to easily draw and share publication-quality chemical structures and animations.

Some key features of ChemDoodle include:

  • Intuitive toolkit for drawing common organic molecules, polymers, Markush structures as well as inorganic complexes.
  • Extensive set of templates, examples, formulae and structure libraries for quick drawing.
  • Advanced customization options for bonds, atoms, labels, text, and more.
  • 3D optimization tools to preview realistic models of molecules.
  • Support for multiple chemical file formats like Molfile, XYZ, Protein Data Bank.
  • Scriptable API for customizing behavior and integration into other applications.
  • Multi-touch gestures for touch-based devices.
  • Available as desktop (Windows/Mac/Linux), web-based, iOS and Android versions.

ChemDoodle makes drawing, editing and sharing professional molecular graphics easy without needing expensive commercial software. With regular updates and an active community, it has become a popular chemical drawing software in academia and industry.

ChemDoodle Features

Features

  1. 2D sketcher for drawing chemical structures
  2. 3D viewer for visualizing molecules and animations
  3. Spectra simulator for predicting NMR, IR, and mass spectra
  4. Shape-based pharmacophore editor
  5. PDB file editor and visualizer
  6. Molecular orbital and electrostatic potential map generator
  7. Export images in PNG, JPG, SVG formats

Pricing

  • Free
  • Open Source

Pros

Intuitive and easy to use interface

Comprehensive set of drawing and visualization tools

Free and open source with active development community

Available on multiple platforms including desktop, web and mobile

Cons

Limited support for importing/exporting to other chemical file formats

Fewer features compared to commercial alternatives like ChemDraw

Lacks some advanced modeling and analysis capabilities


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