Symyx Technologies, Inc., a US-based provider of technologies for R&D, has announced that Symyx Draw 3.1, a chemical drawing application, is now available for download at no charge for academic and non-commercial personal use (www.symyx.com/getdraw). Symyx Draw 3.1, which replaces ISIS/Draw, is seen to enable scientists to draw and edit complex chemical structures and reactions with ease, facilitating the collaborative searching, viewing, registering and archiving of scientific information.
In addition, to support academic researchers, the tool offers publication-quality drawing capabilities for presentations, reports and scientific papers, as well as improved integration with the Microsoft Office suite of software applications. Enhancements for the support of biomolecules are projected to make Symyx Draw 3.1 an ideal drawing tool for scientists engaged in biologics research who need to create, present and document modified 1- and 3-letter peptide or nucleotide sequences.
The Symyx tool is claimed to be easier to use than ISIS/Draw by virtue of its all-purpose drawing tool, multiple undo, user-friendly toolbar functionalities, scientific symbol chooser, large library of protecting group templates, and other usability enhancements. It is also seen to be superior to ISIS/Draw in supporting enhanced stereochemical perception and in providing richer presentation- and publication-quality graphics capabilities. Users can draw and annotate reaction schemes with text and arrows; and apply font, colour and line thickness changes with just a few clicks using the formatting toolbar.
