Monday May 20, 2002: As detailed in the IRT Technology Update 3.8, Drexel University is the beneficiary of the donation of a site license for ChemSketch v5.0 software from Advanced Chemistry Development, Inc. (ACD, Inc., Toronto, Ontario, Canada, www.acdlabs.com). ChemSketch 5.0 is bundled with ACD/Tautomers, ACD/3D Viewer, ACD/Name (freeware) and the ACD/I-Lab Add-on. This donation is the result of a collaboration between ACD and Dr. Kevin Owens in Drexel’s Chemistry Department. ACD is working to incorporate Dr. Owens’ research groups’ expertise in mass spectral correlation analysis into ACD’s MS Manager software. More information can be found
The ChemSketch software available to the Drexel community allows the user to quickly and easily draw molecular structures in a chemistry-oriented interface. It can instantly calculate the chemical formula, molecular weight, and percentage composition. It can also predict several liquid properties such as density and refractive index. The user can customize display properties, e.g., atom numbering, chemical symbols, and atom valence. You may draw reactions, schematic diagrams and design other chemistry-related reports and presentations. You can work with structures, text and graphics simultaneously and transfer them to any OLE-supported software. You can draw 2D structures and convert them to 3D models with the geometry optimization button. You can update the fragment database with your own abbreviations and structures. There are chemistry specific graphics (such as electron orbital shapes) as well as general purpose drawing tools. The program can both Save and Read standard graphic formats such as TIFF, GIF, BMP, WMF.
ChemSketch offers several flexible drawing modes: you can enter abbreviations and obtain fragments, draw fragments and obtain abbreviations, and draw monomers and obtain polymers. ChemSketch can also generate the systematic name, according to guidelines specified by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) for almost any drawn structure of 50 atoms or less (including H), with 0, 1, 2 or 3 rings, and containing H, C, N, P, O, S, F, Cl, Br, I, Li, Na, and K.
This program will be useful to any student taking a chemistry course (freshman through graduate levels) at Drexel who needs to prepare a laboratory report or anyone working with chemical structures in their daily work. This program is also used as the front-end structure entry resource for a number of other chemical property prediction programs available from ACD, including pKa, logP, logD, 1H NMR Predictor and 13C NMR Predictor, etc. Further information about these and a number of other programs may be found directly on the ACD Labs website.
For information about how to obtain the software here at Drexel, see the IRT website.