BKChem is a graphical chemical drawing program for creating two-dimensional molecular structures and reaction diagrams. It provides tools for constructing chemical structures, arranging molecular fragments and preparing illustrations for scientific documents.
The application supports bond-by-bond drawing, allowing users to create molecular structures directly on a canvas. Drawing restrictions help maintain consistent bond lengths and angles, while predefined templates simplify the construction of common ring systems. Users can work with abbreviated chemical groups and linear formulae, reducing the need to draw every atom individually. BKChem also provides tools for positioning and transforming molecular fragments, including alignment, scaling and rotation.
Beyond drawing individual molecules, BKChem supports reaction arrows, text annotations and basic vector graphics. Its document format preserves editable chemical structures, while export facilities allow drawings to be incorporated into reports and other publications. The application can exchange molecular information using established chemistry formats and provides facilities for checking structures. Extensions and batch scripting allow specialised operations to be added to its core drawing functionality.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Provides bond-by-bond molecular drawing with configurable bond lengths and angle restrictions.
- Includes ready-to-use templates for common chemical ring systems.
- Supports abbreviated groups and linear molecular formulae.
- Represents radicals, charges and chemical reaction arrows, including equilibrium and retrosynthetic arrows.
- Includes text formatting, colour controls and vector drawing objects such as rectangles, circles and polygons.
- Provides unlimited undo and redo.
- Supports molecular alignment, scaling and two-dimensional or three-dimensional rotation operations.
- Allows molecular fragments to be rotated around bonds.
- Exports drawings as SVG, EPS, PDF and OpenDocument graphics.
- Supports exporting chemical structures as CML, MDL Molfile and SMILES.
- Imports CML, MDL Molfile and subsets of SMILES and InChI.
- Provides structural validity checking.
- Supports user-defined plugins and batch scripts.
- Can search BKChem documents for specified molecules or molecular fragments.
Website: bkchem.zirael.org
Support:
Developer: Beda Kosata
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
BKChem is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Chemistry: Chemical Structure Drawing | |
|---|---|
| Ketcher | Web-based toolkit for drawing and editing chemical structures |
| XDrawChem | Draw chemical structures, reactions and schemes |
| JChemPaint | Build and manipulate chemical structures interactively |
| ChemCanvas | Sketch chemical structures with a clean graphical interface |
| Molsketch | Draw molecular structures and export publication-ready graphics |
| Butlerov | Create structural formulas and chemical reaction diagrams |
| BKChem | Create and modify molecular structures and diagrams |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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