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Does anyone know of good chemical drawing software for inorganic chemistry. In the past I have used ISIS/Draw, however with a change to Windows 7 I tried to download Symyx Draw 3.3. I cannot figure out how to input NH3 for an ammine ligand. I have also tried ChemSketch. Unfortunately I cannot figure how to turn off the charge function. The program insists on changing NH3 to NH2 and if I force it to NH3 it includes a positive charge on nitrogen (and puts a negative charge on my metal center with NH2). Any help either with these programs or another free/shareware package is greatly appreciated. I need a good program that the students can download for free to use for their lab reports.
Thanks
Jim
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I don't know a free program. Harvey Mudd purchases an annual site licence for ChemDraw. However, even ChemDraw will sometimes change NH3s to NH2s and add charges if you use the default settings. Lets face it, inorganic chemistry is harder than organic :)
Tue, 08/24/2010 - 12:55
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Thanks Adam. I finally navigated through 30 minutes of help in Symyx Draw (the new version of ISIS/Draw) and found out there are two different ways to input atoms/groups. You do not have as much freedom in Symyx as you do in ChemDraw or ChemSketch but when you make Co-NH3 it does not get changed to Co-NH2. And it is free for academic use. I finally managed to draw [Co(NH3)4CO3]NO3 without any charges on nitrogen!
Tue, 08/24/2010 - 14:34
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Jim - This looks like a great resource. Thanks for figuring it out. Now if only it worked on a mac. (Luckily I can rely on ChemDraw - I'm lucky enough to have a copy.) Anyone else know of other programs? What programs do you use?
Wed, 08/25/2010 - 05:59
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ChemSketch is a good software for chemical drawings.
Mon, 11/01/2010 - 07:34
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