Open Babel is computer software, a chemical expert system mainly used to interconvert chemical file formats.^[3]

Quick Facts Developer(s), Initial release ...

Open Babel

Developer(s)	Open Babel development team
Initial release	2 June 2005; 18 years ago (2005-06-02)
Stable release	3.1.1[1]  / 8 May 2020; 4 years ago (8 May 2020)
Repository	www.github.com/openbabel/openbabel
Written in	C, C++ (wxWidgets[2])
Operating system	Windows, macOS, Linux, Android
Platform	IA-32, x86-64
Available in	English
Type	Cheminformatics, molecular modelling
License	GPL 2.0
Website	www.openbabel.org

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Due to the strong relationship to informatics this program belongs more to the category cheminformatics than to molecular modelling. It is available for Windows, Unix, Linux, macOS, and Android. It is free and open-source software released under a GNU General Public License (GPL) 2.0.

The project's stated goal is: "Open Babel is a community-driven scientific project assisting both users and developers as a cross-platform program and library designed to support molecular modeling, chemistry, and many related areas, including interconversion of file formats and data."

Open Babel and JOELib were derived from the OELib cheminformatics library. In turn, OELib was based on ideas in the original chemistry program Babel and an unreleased object-oriented programming library called OBabel.

• chemical expert system
• interconversion of many chemical file formats
• substructure search, based on simplified molecular-input line-entry system (SMILES)
• fingerprint calculation
• 3D coordinate generation^[4]
• wrappers for Python, Perl, Java, Ruby, C#^[5]

• Avogadro – molecular builder and editor based on Open Babel
• Ghemical – molecular mechanics program based on Open Babel
• JOELib – Java version of Open Babel and OELib
• XDrawChem – 2D drawing program based on Open Babel
• Comparison of software for molecular mechanics modeling
• Blue Obelisk^[6]
• List of free and open-source software packages