Technical Note

Installation of ACD/ChemSketch Freeware into CrossOver Office on Version 5.0

David Fung and Robin Martin Advanced Chemistry Development, Inc. Toronto, ON, Canada www.acdlabs.com

Introduction

The growing popularity of the Linux has led to requests for a compatible version of ACD/ChemSketch for this platform. There is currently no version of ACD/ChemSketch available that can run natively under Linux. This technical note describes the necessary steps to get Freeware ACD/ChemSketch running on Linux through the use of Code Weavers’ CrossOver Office. CrossOver Office allows you to install your favorite productivity applications and plug-ins in Linux, without needing a Microsoft Operating System license. CrossOver Office is a commercial implementation of the Project (http://www.winehq.org).

Obtaining ACD/ChemSketch & CrossOver Office

CrossOver Office is a commercially available package and a fully functional 30-day trial can be obtained from the following link: http://www.codeweavers.com/site/products/ ACD/ChemSketch 5.0 Freeware is available as a free download package from ACD/Labs' website: http://www.acdlabs.com/download/chemsk.html The installation instructions and User’s Guide are also available from this link.

The Installation/Setup Process

The installation of CrossOver Office and ACD/ChemSketch described below were performed on a Fedora Core 1 Linux system with kernel version 2.4.22-1.2115.ntpl and the Gnome . The setup process on other implementations of Linux should be similar.

1. Install the CrossOver Office software. Details of the installation process can be found at http://www.codeweavers.com/site/products/.

Technical Note

2. Open the CrossOver Office Standard Setup. A screen should appear that looks like the following:

3. The DCOM95 driver must be installed before installing ACD/ChemSketch 5.0. From the window shown above, click Install to bring you to the software installation dialog window:

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Choose DCOM95 from the list and then click Next. 4. In the next dialog window, choose the Express Install mode for DCOM95 and then click Next.

5. The DCOM95 windows installer will appear. Follow the installation instructions in this installer. 6. When the installation of DCOM95 has completed, a CrossOver Office dialog window will appear to indicate that the installation is done:

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7. Click Finish. The CrossOver Office Setup window will show that the DCOM95 driver is installed.

8. In order to install the ACD/ChemSketch 5.0 Freeware, click Install. This will invoke the software installation dialog window. Select the Install unsupported software option.

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9. Clicking Next will invoke the following dialog window which asks for the location of the installation file:

In this case, the ACD/ChemSketch 5.0 Freeware file was downloaded to the /root directory. In order to specify this location, select the Other *.exe file option and then type in the file location as shown above. Click Next. 10. The ACD/Labs Setup window will now appear:

Detailed installation instructions are available from the ACD/ChemSketch 5.0 Freeware download page. The website link is provided in the previous section. Just follow the instructions in the presented dialog boxes to perform the installation.

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11. After completing the ACD/ChemSketch installation, the following CrossOver Office dialog window will appear:

12. Clicking Finish will result in the CrossOver Office Standard Setup window displaying. The “Installed software” section of this window will now show that both DCOM95 and ACD/ChemSketch are installed.

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13. Click OK to close the CrossOver Office Standard Setup window. 14. The ACD/ChemSketch program can now be accessed through the Main Menu button on the Linux desktop. Click on Main Menu | Windows Applications | Programs | ACDLabs Freeware 5.0 | ChemSketch to start the program.

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15. ACD/ChemSketch will now be running in the Linux environment.

Conclusion

This document has shown the procedure to allow Freeware ACD/ChemSketch to run on a Linux system with the aid of CrossOver Office. Now chemistry students and educators who are Linux enthusiasts can have access to the popular ACD/ChemSketch for their structure drawing needs.

Release Notes

There are presently two known bugs (Aug 18th 2004) when running ACD/ChemSketch with CrossOver Office: • Cut and paste of chemical structures from ACD/ChemSketch into other applications is problematic. • The application minimizes when switching between modules (ACD/ChemSketch and ACD/3D Viewer). Note Support for the Freeware version of ACD/ChemSketch, and this implementation, is not available from ACD/Labs. ACD/Labs provides this information to help Linux users use the best Chemical Drawing package available.

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