Three Quarters of a Million Users Drawing Chemical Structures the ACD/Labs Way

Advanced Chemistry Development, Inc., (ACD/Labs) recently celebrated the 750,000th download—by users from literally every country on the planet—of their chemical structure drawing tool, ACD/ChemSketch.

If you have ever needed to draw chemical structures, for a report, publication, grant application, or any other reason, you likely know that making a two-dimensional image fully convey the chemical information represented by a molecule’s chemical structure is not an easy task. Commercial drawing packages are available but not always practical when resources are limited, and some free applications lack features and flexibility. With ACD/ChemSketch Freeware, there is a viable software solution at the ready, and it’s freely available to all via the article webpage.

In 1998, ACD/Labs began offering a freeware version of their popular structure drawing software, ACD/ChemSketch, to academic institutions and students. In the years since, it has undergone development and refinement, and in September 2006, ACD/Labs released version 10.0, marking a milestone for a company that prides itself on its dedication to science and chemical education.

“ACD/ChemSketch is widely celebrated by the chemistry community as their preferred structure drawing tool at this point. Chemists around the world have helped give us the success we have experienced as a company and have allowed us to grow year on year in both market penetration and reputation,” commented Antony Williams, VP and Chief Science Officer for ACD/Labs. “Our ongoing delivery and development of ChemSketch freeware is one way we acknowledge their support. It also facilitates the entry of students around the world into the joy of investigating the application of computers to chemistry. We will continue to develop ChemSketch to satisfy the needs of our partners in chemistry.”

Over three quarters of a million chemists, including users at academic institutions worldwide that have adopted ACD/ChemSketch as an interactive teaching tool, are benefiting from its advanced features.

• Draw professional-looking structures for use in reports, publications, and other software applications such as Microsoft Word
• Draw polymers, organometallics, and Markush structures—capabilities that are not universally available in commercial packages
• Recognize tautomers
• View molecules in 3D
• Search by chemical structure in PubChem and eMolecules web databases
• Utilize a built-in naming tool for systematic nomenclature (for molecules comprised of less than 50 atoms and three rings)

For more information about the ACD/ChemSketch freeware or commercial versions, visit the article webpage.

Read a review of commercial drawing packages from the University of Debrecen, Hungary.