DrawMol is a powerful graphical interface for visualizing and building molecular structures.

Features

With DrawMol, you can:

Build a molecular structure from scratch

  • Build a structure by clicking and dragging to add atoms and bonds. You can then refine your structure with a single click using UFF force field optimization. When building a structure, DrawMol can guess for you the type of bonds (single, double, triple or aromatic), or you can force it by clicking on a bond. What's more, hydrogen atoms can be added automatically
  • Save your structure in xyz format or create a Gaussian or Gamess input file directly. For Gamess, if the program is installed locally, you can even run the job from DrawMol (in the background) and monitor progress.
  • Paste a structure directly into DrawMol's Cartesian editor. It can recognize XYZ, Gaussian, Gamess, Turbomole and Z-matrix formats. The Cartesian editor can also be used to output the structure in any of these formats, as well as to modify a given structure by adding/removing certain atoms or changing a given atomic element.
  • Import a structure from the ChemSpider database

Visualize molecular structure as well as molecular properties

  • Open XYZ, MDL molfile, Gaussian log, Gaussian fchk, Gamess log, Dalton out, Molpro out file formats.
  • In addition to molecular structure, DrawMol can read various molecular properties (currently only available for the Gaussian fchk file format) :
    • Mulliken charges
    • Dipolar moment
    • Polarizability and first hyperpolarizability
    • Vibrational normal modes
    • Magnetic shields (NMR)
    • Molecular orbits from basis set and LCAO coefficients
  • Visualization of molecular properties:
    • Atom labels
    • Mulliken charges
    • Chemical displacements in NMR
    • Dipole moment vector
    • Beta vector
    • Unit sphere representation of polarizability and hyperpolarizability
    • Atomic displacements of the normal modes of a vibration via vectors, spheres or even animations
    • Isosurfaces of molecular orbitals
  • Open Gaussian cube files and visualize stored date isosurfaces.

In addition, DrawMol provides tools

  • To match two molecules or fragments with each other using a matching procedure (least-squares approach).
  • To orient the Z axis of a molecule so that it is perpendicular to a plane formed by three or more atoms, or passes through two or more atoms, using a least-squares approach.

Save any structure

  • As an image either in png, tiff, jpeg or dae (Collada)
  • As a movie for normal mode animation
  • As an XYZ, CIF, PDB file
  • As an h5mol file. This format is essentially an HDF5 container that stores all molecular properties as well as visualization preferences. This file can be read by DrawMol but can also be easily analyzed using C, Fortran, Python, ... and even unloaded (with the h5dump utility) into an ascii file (see https://www.hdfgroup.org for details).

Citation

If you use DrawMol for your scientific work, please cite the DrawMol program in your articles:

"DrawMol, Vincent LIEGEOIS, UNamur, www.unamur.be/drawmol"

All articles that cite DrawMol will be listed on this web page.

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Get DrawMol

This application is available exclusively on mac from macOS 10.15 Catalina on the mac App Store.