Re: Tools: Software for drawing chemical structures?

[Hodgins Family <ehodgins -at- telusplanet -dot- net>]

On Wed, 2006-21-06 at 09:34 -0400, Geoff Hart wrote:
> For an article I'm writing, I need to be able to generate an image of 
> the 3D structure of a moderately complex chemical such as a simple 
> protein. In fact, a sequence of half a dozen amino acids would more 
> than suffice. I don't need to draw any specific molecule(s); I'm just 
> trying to illustrate a few different levels of abstraction, starting 
> with "realistic" (the 3D molecule) and working my way up the chain of 
> abstraction to the base triplets that encode the amino acids. Clip art 
> could work, but I'd rather generate the image myself to avoid any 
> potential copyright entanglements.
> 
> Lots of stuff turns up in Google, but before I spend a few hours 
> spelunking and testing, I thought I'd look for personal recommendations 
> from people who have actually used the software.
> 
> Criteria: I'm looking for something free (I almost certainly won't use 
> it again), free of copyright entanglements, easy to use, and able to 
> produce a crisp image that would ideally also work in black and white 
> or greyscale. System requirements: I'm on a Mac using OS X (Panther, 
> not Tiger). A browser-based tool would be fine.
> 
> Thanks in advance!


MOLMOL might work for you. A tutorial page is found here:
http://hugin.ethz.ch/wuthrich/software/molmol/man/tutorial_ex1.html

I found it referenced under Molecular Graphics at the following link:
http://www-iphicles.rcsb.org/pdb/software-list.html

On the same page is PyMol which is useful. Some screenshots of it in
action are at: http://pymol.sourceforge.net/pmimag/screen.html

Good luck!

Rob

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