An Amazing Sketch Utility – Elemental Review

What an extraordinary surprise! Hoping to find an app that would allow one to "sketch" molecular structures, I stumbled upon Elemental. After watching the short video tutorial I was able to easily start using the app and learning the ins and outs of its functionality. It didn't take long before I was able to sketch a decent looking triglyceride structure having sixty-three atoms . . . on my iPhone! There are built in functional groups including a variety of carbon rings having straight carbon, or carbon-nitrogen or carbon-oxygen atoms. You can easily replace any atom using a common atom set, but the app offers the functionality to add any element in the periodic table by typing in the atomic symbol. You can rotate groups of atoms or functional groups to improve your sketch. There are configuration options the allow the user to: display atom numbers, warn when valence is exceeded, and display tips. The app allows the standard iPhone zoom in and zoom out functionality. You can easily add or modify a charge number for any atom. There are undo and redo options if you make a mistake. You can save your work as an image, add it to Dropbox or email it. I could go on, but will summarize by attesting that this app allowed me to do exactly what I wanted in a very short period of time. There were no crashes or unexpected behavior. The interface is clean and well built. You will be happy with Elemental if you need to sketch any structure seen in an organic chemistry class. Well done Dotmatics. You've hit this one out of the park!
Review by Mashara! on Elemental.