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Coming Soon: Copy Structures from ChemDraw and Paste Them into ChemWriter

ChemDraw is a widely-used desktop program for creating publication quality chemical structures. One of the most repeated feature requests for ChemWriter, our chemical structure editor for web and mobile applications, is the ability to copy chemical structures from ChemDraw and paste them into ChemWriter.

It's worth understanding the reasons behind this feature request. ChemDraw isn't just popular, it's ubiquitous in chemistry. Many chemists have built up large libraries of well-drawn structures, typically in the form of objects embedded into Word documents, but also as ChemDraw CDX files. In other cases, chemists may simply want to continue using the drawing tool they've become accustomed to.

Although ChemDraw may be ubiquitous on the desktop, for a variety of good technical reasons it's but one of many options in web applications.

This creates an annoyance for many chemists, who must repeatedly re-draw structures they have already drawn in order to submit them to browser-fronted chemical databases and informatics systems.

For those who have asked for the ability to paste structures copied from ChemDraw into ChemWriter, the wait is almost over. Full details will be coming soon - if you'd rather not wait, please feel free to drop me a line.