My favorite web tool to create small molecules: Hack-A-Mol
Hack-a-Mol is a “web app” (kind of complete program in the form of a regular webpage) created by Robert “Bob” Hanson, originally devised for students of cheminformatics who are learning how chemical structures are represented digitally. But as I make the point here, it’s very useful for research too. And all free and online, without requiring any software or library installs, just your browser!
With Hack-a-Mol users can draw a structure in 2D and compare it to its 3D structure. The page provides structural data (i.e. atom coordinates) in various formats, and also accepts chemical identifiers such as a chemical name, SMILES strings, or Chemical Abstracts Registry numbers. Users can also drag-drop a structure file into the JSmol window or copy/paste it into the text area.
Hack-a-Mol is superuseful to quickly pull molecules from databases, then possibly modify them or simply draw them from scratch, and to generate their 3D structures in multiple popular formats that can be interconverted right there. Indeed, the different fields (coordinates, identifiers, 2D…
