Metamolecular Company Blog

Better Drawing With ChemWriter 1.3.0

ChemWriter 1.3.0 is now available for download.

This version improves the usability of the drawing interface by adding new capabilities for controlling mouse cursor hover radius, and whether heteroatoms can be placed into empty space with keyboard shortcuts. The following four methods are now available to EditorApplet:

• getHoverRadius - Returns the hover radius, or the radius around which atoms will be detected as being hovered over by the mouse cursor. This is also the radius around which the circle indicating a highlighted atom or bond will be drawn.
• setHoverRadius - Sets the hover radius, or the radius around which atoms will be detected as being hovered over by the mouse cursor. This is also the radius around which the circle indicating a highlighted atom or bond will be drawn.
• isPreventStrayHeteroatoms - Returns true if stray heteroatom protection is enabled, or false otherwise. Stray heteroatom protection will disable keyboard shortcuts for heteroatoms placed into empty space, i.e., not connected to a neighboring atom.
• setPreventStrayHeteroatoms - Determines whether stray heteroatom protection will be enabled or not. Stray heteroatom protection will disable keyboard shortcuts for heteroatoms placed into empty space, i.e., not connected to a neighboring atom. Enabling this feature makes it more difficult for a user to draw a structure in which disconnected heteroatoms appear. Disconnected heteroatoms can still be drawn by choosing the atom label tool.

As with all other ChemWriter accessors, the corresponding object tag parameters can also be set:

• hoverRadius
• preventStrayHeteroatoms