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Chemical Structure Drawing with ACD/ChemSketch

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Draw Molecular Structures and Communicate Scientific Ideas

  • Draw molecular structures, chemical reactions, schema, and biomolecules (peptide sequences) with ease
    Draw molecular structures, chemical reactions, schema, and biomolecules (peptide sequences) with ease
  • Communicate scientific information with clarity and create professional presentations and reports
    Communicate scientific information with clarity and create professional presentations and reports

ACD/ChemSketch is an easy-to-use, chemically intelligent molecular structure drawing application, with more than 2 million users worldwide.

  • Draw chemical structures, reactions, and schema, and access a variety of graphical tools and templates
  • Generate names from molecular structure
  • Calculate molecular properties from chemical structure
  • Create professional reports, presentations, and publication-ready figures
  • Communicate scientific information with clarity and ease

Draw Molecular Structures | Highlights

ChemSketch is a comprehensive structure editor with a variety of tools and functionality that ease the communication of scientific and chemical information.

  • Draw molecular structures, generate structures from InChI or SMILES strings, or copy/paste from ChemDraw
  • Easily and quickly include known molecules
    • Insert pre-drawn templates of amino acids, aromatics, steroids, sugars, and more
    • Search the Dictionary of >170, 000 systematic, trivial, and trade names
  • Easily draw reactions and complex chemical schema (including biotransformation maps)
  • Use graphical templates and tools to communicate chemistry and chemical biology concepts (e.g., chemical bond types, Lewis structures, molecular orbitals, Newman projections, peptide sequences, and more)
  • Import and export structure files in a variety of standard file formats

Vendor or File Format Data Format Comments
Chemical Drawings
ACD/Labs *.sk2
ChemAxon Marvin Sketch *.mrv Input only
Dassault Systèmes BIOVIA Draw *.skc Formerly ISIS Sketch, MDL Draw, Symyx Draw, and Accelrys Draw
PerkinElmer Chemdraw *.cdx, *.cdxml, *.chm Input only for cdxml files
Adobe Acrobat *.pdf Output only
Chemical Structures and Reactions
Chemical Markup Language *.cml Output only
FASTA formats *.fasta and other Peptide sequences
InChI Text string
InChIKey Text string Output only
MOL files *.mol
Pistoia Alliance HELM *.helm, *.xhelm Peptide sequences, input only for xhelm files
Reaction Files *.rxn
SMILES Text string
Images
GIF image format *.gif
JPG image format *.jpg Input only
Paintbrush *.pcx Output only
PNG image format *.png
TIFF Bitmap *.tif Output only
Windows Bitmap *.bmp, *.dib
Windows Metafile *.wmf

The IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChI) is a character string generated by computer algorithms to facilitate the electronic treatment of chemical structures. InChIs are unique to the chemical structures they describe, making chemicals machine-readable and discoverable; InChI is the bar-code for chemical structures.

The InChI program includes the ability to generate an InChIKey—a condensed 25-character representation of the InChI string. This compact representation significantly expands the use of InChI encoding for structure specification and search, particularly over the Internet.

For more information visit the InChI Trust website at www.inchi-trust.org or the IUPAC website at www.iupac.org/inchi.

  • Draw organic molecules, organometallics, biomolecules, polymers, Lewis structures, 2D and 3D structure representations, delocalized Markush structures, and more
    Draw organic molecules, organometallics, biomolecules, polymers, Lewis structures, 2D and 3D structure representations, delocalized Markush structures, and more
  • Calculate quantities for chemical reactions (with automatically calculated chemical formula, molecular weight etc.)
    Calculate quantities for chemical reactions (with automatically calculated chemical formula, molecular weight etc.)
  • Draw complex schema, such as biotransformation maps, with ease
    Draw complex schema, such as biotransformation maps, with ease

Create Professional Reports and Publication-Ready Figures

Create comprehensive reports to clearly communicate your research, and scientific information
  • Create comprehensive reports to clearly communicate your research, and scientific information
  • Conveniently embed structures, schema, and other chemical information directly into Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents
  • Produce publication-ready figures for popular journals, e.g., ACS, RSC, Helvetica, and more
I find the ACD/ChemSketch software to be very intuitive. Furthermore, it appears to seamlessly integrate with other Microsoft Office programs, such as Word. Thomas J. Siepmann, Attorney; Birch, Stewart, Kolasch, & Birch, LLP

Generate Names for Structures

ChemSketch uses the powerful chemical name generation algorithms of ACD/Labs' well-known nomenclature software to generate names according to IUPAC rules.

  • Name molecular structures with up to 50 atoms and 3 cycles
  • Use the built-in Dictionary of systematic, trivial, and trade names to help name structures

Interested in a comprehensive chemical nomenclature application?

Predict Molecular Properties

Predict a variety of molecular properties from structure including:

Molecular weight
Formula weight
Density
LogP
Percentage composition

Molar refractivity
Refractive index
Molar volume
Density
Parachor
Structural formula

  • Calculate quantities for chemical reactions and solutions

Want to calculate the physicochemical, ADME and toxicity profiles of molecules?

Chemically Intelligent Search

Conveniently search documents, applications, and third-party databases by name fragment, full structure, or partial structures.

  • Conduct a chemical structure search of your computer files
    • Searchable file formats include ACD/Labs, FASTA, HELM, ChemDraw, BIOVIA, Adobe, and Microsoft® Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
  • Search for structures in EPA iCSS, PubChem, and eMolecules databases

Looking for a replacement for ChemDraw?

ChemSketch is a popular alternative to the ChemDraw molecular editor, offering all the time-saving shortcuts, graphical templates, and communication tools you are used to.

Making the change couldn't be easier!

Simply copy/paste, edit, or open existing ChemDraw (*.cdx) files, and save them in ChemSketch.

Want to provide ChemSketch throughout your organization?

Many organizations and educational institutions conveniently provide ChemSketch site-wide, deployed on multiple computers for hundreds of users. Contact us to learn more about this option.

Produce publication-ready figures for popular journals, e.g., ACS, RSC, Helvetica, and more

Resources

Movie
Drawing Tools

This is a quick walkthrough of the structure drawing tools for ChemSketch. 2.0mins
Play

Movie
Stereochemistry Drawing Tools

Find out some tips and tricks for drawing stereochemistry. 2.5mins
Play

Quick Start Guide
Drawing Basic Structures

Getting started using ACD/ChemSketch? Get comfortable with basic functionality using this guide.
Read more

Webinar
Boost Your Biologics Research with Chemically Intelligent Software

Join Eliot Randle and Karim Kassam as they discuss how biopharmaceuticals are changing the future of medicine, and how a chemically intelligent platform can improve biologics research.
Watch on Demand

Blog Article
Markush structures—what they are, and how to draw them

Markush structures are useful in many places within chemistry, and creating them with chemistry drawing software takes no more time than regular chemical drawing. Read more about how adding Markush structure drawing to your skillset can help to accurately communicate your science
Read more

Article
Docking of Three Oral Carcinoma Targets with Reserpine

This article highlights the use of ACD/ChemSketch to draw and optimize structures used in this study.
Read more

Ready to learn more?

Contact us if you have any questions, or purchase now on our web store.