ChemSpider is presently under maintenance.
We are adding new capabilities as we move from beta release.
The site is still working but you might experience some issues. Please bear with us.
Structure Editors Used with ChemSpider
Two chemical structure editors have been integrated to ChemSpider. These are the
ACD/Structure Drawing Applet and ACD/ChemSketch (including
the freeware version NOT AVAILABLE AT BETA RELEASE).
The Structure Drawing Applet (SDA) is a Java-based chemical structure editor and is embedded directly into the ChemSpider website.
When you first open the webpage the applet will need to be downloaded and may take some time depending on your internet connection.
For every following visit the SDA will load quickly since it is cached on your computer. The SDA is very intuitive to use but for
an overview of commands the reference guide will help. A full manual is also available here.
Please note that the following capabilities are not available in the applet despite being described in the manual : Molecule cleaning and Reaction Drawing.
ACD/ChemSketch is a PC-based chemical structure package (also available for
Linux users) available as both commercial software
and freeware. ACD/ChemSketch freeware has been available from ACD/Labs for
a number of years and is presently available as a version 10 download. The
ChemSpider add-on to allow searches of ChemSpider via ChemSketch is also available as a download (LINK TO ADD-ON) and a technical
note explaining how to install and use the add-on is available. Manuals for ChemSketch
are also available in various languages.