Enhancing Chemistry Functionality with Open-SourceSolutions

We're excited to announce that with the release of version 1.108 RSpace uses open-source solutions for drawing, editing, and searching chemical structures. This change aligns with our commitment to open-source values following RSpace's move to open-source in June 2024 (blog post).

What's Changing?

RSpace now uses Ketcher for rendering molecules with OpenBabel and Indigo on the backend for managing the underlying chemistry data. This powerful combination provides all the functionality our users have come to expect in RSpace, while embracing the flexibility and collaborative potential of open-source software.

What This Means for Our Users

The good news is that this transition is seamless for our users:

• ‍All existing features are preserved: You can still draw chemical structures and reactions with the same functionality you're used to‍
• Full ChemDraw support continues: Import, manipulation, export, and search for chemistry objects including ChemDraw files work exactly as before‍
• Backward compatibility: All your previously created chemical structures and data remain fully compatible with the new solution

Our documentation has been updated to reflect these changes, but users should find the transition intuitive given the similar functionality between the old and new solutions.

Why We Made This Change

Since making RSpace open-source in June2024, we've been committed to utilizing open-source components wherever possible. This approach allows us to continuously and more flexibly extend RSpace's functionality through both our internal development and community contributions.

Looking Forward

Over the next releases, will merge the new chemistry solution into the open-source repository. Moreover, the ResearchSpace team is focusing on expanding chemistry functionality in RSpace throughout the year. Moving to open-source chemistry tools gives us the foundation we need to implement new features and improvements, such as advanced chemical calculations within RSpace, retrieving data from chemistry databases, exporting chemistry data to repositories, and more. Reach out to us if you have particular functionality or solutions that you would like to see supported in RSpace.

Effective Immediately for Current Customers

This transition is already complete and active in the current release (1.108). As soon as your RSpace instance is updated to the latest release you'll be using the new Ketcher-based chemistry tools.

We value the excellent service ChemAxon has provided to RSpace users over the years with Marvin, and we look forward to seeing how collaborating with the open-source community evolves the chemistry functionality in RSpace.

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Have questions about this transition? Please reach out to our support team at support@researchspace.com.