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Suggestions for drawing tools for Organic Chem.
Thu, 04/24/2008 - 10:39 — mjb14
I'm looking for suggestions for free / inexpensive, easy-to-use drawing tools (software) that students can use to sketch molecules in an Organic Chem. course. I have looked at Gimp but am concerned with the learning curve / installation. Now I am now looking into the draw tool in Open Office.
The chemists have suggested ISIS Draw/Chem Draw but I think the learning curve will be too steep with these more professional products. I am hoping to find something that, when used with an inexpensive graphics tablet, allows students to sketch a molecule (or chain of molecules) as quickly as they could on paper.
We are discussing then having the students do a multiple upload into a flickr account so other students and instructor can do a quick scan and provide comments. Thanks in advance for suggestions.
Free Tools or Concept Mapper?
I think there are some freeware molecule drawing tools out there
http://www.openscience.org/links.php?section=56
http://bkchem.zirael.org/screenshots_en.html
But my other thought was something like OmniGraffle (which is Mac only) or some other diagramming program which supports polygons and different line types. Inspiration may be another possibility.
I like Omnigraffle (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/OmniGraffle/) because it's an illustration program built for non illustrators and because you can download or create custom templates. I've been using for things like logic diagrams, mockups, flow charts and so forth.
Visio is sort of a similar tool for Windows (and the freeware version is Dia at http://live.gnome.org/Dia/Screenshots)
FYI - Visio and Inspiration are in the Windows student labs at UP and Omnigraffle is in the Mac labs.