“ChemPad: generating 3D molecules from 2D sketches” by Tenneson and Becker

Molecules are inherently three-dimensional (3D) objects that are represented by chemists on paper and classroom blackboards by a system of two-dimensional (2D) notations. ChemPad, a new Tablet PC application with a pedagogical focus, generates 3D molecular structures from hand drawn digital ink rather than from traditional molecule construction interfaces. Leveraging the gestural power of Fluid Inking [Zeleznik et al. ], ChemPad allows chemists to input molecules in a quick and natural fashion to generate models viewable by the open-source JMol1 molecule viewer. This capability gives ChemPad pedagogical value as shown by our user study of a hundred organic chemistry students who had difficulty with 3D chemistry thinking and used ChemPad to overcome that hurdle.

1. Finn, P. W., Halperin, D., Kavraki, L. E., et al. 1996. Geometric manipulation of flexible ligands. In FCRC ’96/WACG ’96: Selected papers from the Workshop on Applied Computational Geometry, Towards Geometric Engineering, Springer-Verlag, London, UK, 67–78.
2. Joseph J. LaViola, J., and Zeleznik, R. C. 2004. Mathpad2: a system for the creation and exploration of mathematical sketches. ACM Trans. Graph. 23, 3, 432–440.
3. Zeleznik, R., et al. Fluid inking: Using punctuation to allow modeless combination of marking and gesturing. Brown University Tech Report CS-04-11.