User 8139ea8dbd
03-06-2013 18:14:25
Based on my experience, chemists still prefer ChemDraw for
structure drawing, rendering and editing, as ChemDraw structures “look better”.
In addition, ChemDraw format will remain to be the standard format accepted by
patent office and main publishers for the foreseeable future. So I wonder if JChem products could offer better
ChemDraw support.
I guess there could be two reasons behind the statement “ChemdDraw
structures look better”. (1) There is a key
difference in how 2D cleaning is done in the two systems. JChem tries to squeeze a structure into a
rendering box of given size, so it scales each structure and sometimes even
distorts bond angles. ChemDraw does not
use such a constraint, instead it uses a fix CC bond length and tries to
stretch the structure out. When there is
no space constrain, ChemDraw rendering typically look better, otherwise, JChem
rendering seems to work better. Ideally
users can have a choice and can switch between the two modes case by case. (2) The default display properties for Marvin
is not most suitable for PowerPoint presentation, the structures are too thin for
slides (IMHO), while ChemDraw rendering looks more solid. There is no separate settings for Marvin under
different Office Applications, but one setting does not fit all
(Word/PPT/Excel).
In addition, to prepare a table of ChemDraw structures for
patent filing or manuscript, one has to copy and paste individual ChemDraw structures
one a time, a very time consuming process for users.
Therefore, I wonder if we can consider a few features for
J4X:
(1)
Enable users to switch between the two rendering
mode (JChem and ChemDraw). If one chooses
ChemDraw rendering mode, during the creation of a structure column (such as use
“From SMILES”), J4X uses a preset CC bond length, then it automatically
determines the appropriate column width and height so that all structures can
be completely displayed with the cells.
One can also scale a range of cells up and down and the CC bond length will
be adjusted accordingly. This will require
a rendering panel in the ribbon for mode switching, bond length scaling,
resetting, etc.
(2)
Support pasting JChem structures/tables into
Word/PPT with ChemDraw formats.
(3)
Allow separate display settings to control
bond/atom display properties for Excel/Word/PPT, so pasted structures look nice
for presentation, without the need to tune the display settings for individual
structures.
(4)
Add Export to Word/PPT for J4X, which enables
one to easily convert an J4X table into a Word table (containing ChemDraw
objects) for publication.
Thanks for your considerations.