ChemSketch

ACD/ChemSketch is a molecular structure drawing application developed by ACD/Labs, used by millions of scientists, educators, and students worldwide. It supports drawing chemical structures, reactions, and complex schema, while also calculating molecular descriptors and generating IUPAC names for small molecules. A freeware version is available for academic and personal use, while the full commercial version offers extended capabilities for professional reporting and publication.

ChemSketch is suited for chemists working in research, pharmaceutical, and educational settings who need to produce accurate chemical drawings, generate names, predict properties, and create publication-ready reports and presentations.

Structure Drawing Capabilities

• Draw organic molecules, organometallics, biomolecules, polymers, Lewis structures, 2D and 3D structure representations, delocalized Markush structures, and peptide sequences
• Edit structures to customize bond type, stereo configuration, atom type and charge, radical label, atom numbering, and more
• Draw chemical reactions and complex schema, including biotransformation maps
• Label reaction arrows with specific experimental conditions
• Associate atoms in reactant-to-product schemes using atom-atom mapping
• Insert pre-drawn templates of amino acids, aromatics, carbohydrates, steroids, and sugars
• Use graphical templates to insert molecular orbitals, Newman projections, laboratory equipment, and more
• Generate structures from InChI or SMILES strings, or copy and paste from ChemDraw
• Generate suggested tautomeric forms of a drawn structure
• Generate all possible structures for a given Markush representation
• Produce an optimized 3D model from a 2D structure
• Import and export structure files in a variety of standard file formats

IUPAC Name Generation

• Name molecular structures according to IUPAC rules
• Search the ACD/Dictionary of over 183,000 systematic, trivial, and trade names
• IUPAC name generation in ChemSketch is limited to structures with up to 50 atoms (restricted to H, C, N, P, O, S, F, Cl, Br, I, Li, Na, and K), 3 cycles, and 100 characters; expanded naming capabilities are available in ACD/Name

Molecular Property Calculations

• Predict molecular properties from structure, including molecular weight, formula, formula weight, density, LogP, percentage composition, molar refractivity, refractive index, molar volume, parachor, structural formula, and surface tension
• Calculate quantities for chemical reactions and solutions, with automatically calculated chemical formula and molecular weight

Reporting and Output

• Create comprehensive reports embedding structures, schema, and chemical information
• Embed content directly into Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents, or any OLE-supported application
• Produce publication-ready figures formatted for popular journals including ACS, RSC, and Helvetica

Structure Search

• Search files by chemical structure in ACD/Labs, FASTA, HELM, ChemDraw, BIOVIA, Adobe, and Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint file formats
• Search for structures in EPA iCSS, PubChem, SciFindern, and eMolecules databases
• Search variations in structure designation of π-complexes such as ferrocenes as a single entity in Spectrus DB

Workflow Steps

1. Draw a molecule with C-C bonds by clicking and dragging in the Structure window
2. Edit bonds or atoms using available tools, then clean the structure or rotate to view different orientations
3. Calculate properties, generate the IUPAC name, or draw additional structures to create a chemical reaction for use in a report or publication

ChemSketch supports site-wide deployment across organizations and educational institutions for multiple users. It integrates with Microsoft Office applications and other OLE-supported software. As of January 2026, following ACD/Labs' acquisition by Revvity Signals, ChemSketch is no longer available to new customers; existing customers are advised to contact their account manager for license and transition information.