Automatically numbering compounds in chemical schemes

Author

LianTze Lim (Overleaf)

License

Creative Commons CC BY 4.0

Abstract

This example demonstrates how the chemnum package can be used to automatically number compounds in reaction schemes created with ChemDraw (saved as .eps files). While the chemstyle/chemscheme package can also be used, its author recommends the use of chemnum as it's deemed to be clearer.

Ideally, the ChemDraw-generated .eps files should contain "TMP1", "TMP2" etc as temporary markers, which will then be replaced with automatically incrementing compound counters using the \replacecmpd command. Switch the LaTeX engine to LaTeX+dvipdf from the project's Settings icon (the gear icon) so that the replacement actually takes place.

Tags

Dynamic Figures Chemistry

Find More Templates

Automatically numbering compounds in chemical schemes

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\title{Automatically numbering compounds in chemical schemes}


%% Uncomment these lines if you get error about "too many \new..." 
% \let\tmp\newinsert
% \let\newinsert\newbox
\usepackage{chemstyle}
% \let\newinsert\tmp
\usepackage{chemnum}

% For positioning the scheme captions at the top.
\floatsetup[scheme]{position=top}

\begin{document}

\begin{scheme}
%% hexa.eps has "TMP1" and "TMP2" as the markers
%% in fact EVERY .eps should start with TMP1, TMP2 etc
%% for ease of use
\replacecmpd{first:compound}  %% automatically replace TMP1
\replacecmpd{second:compound}  %% automatically replace TMP2
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{hexa}
\caption{This is something!}
\label{first:chem:scheme}
\end{scheme}

Compounds \refcmpd{first:compound} and \refcmpd{second:compound} in \ref{first:chem:scheme}. Here's a reference to in-text creation of \cmpd{RareCompound} that we can later refer to.

\vfill

\begin{scheme}
\replacecmpd{next:compound} %% automatically replace TMP1 BUT the autonumbering counter updates to 3!
\replacecmpd{last:compound} %% automatically replace TMP2
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{hexa}
\caption{This is something else!}
\label{second:chem:scheme}
\end{scheme}

Compounds \refcmpd{next:compound} and \refcmpd{last:compound} in \ref{second:chem:scheme}. Hey remember \cmpd{RareCompound}? \texttt{chemnum} still remembers it correctly, \emph{and} see how the compound numbering continues throughout the scheme diagrams!

\vfill

%% MANUAL UPDATING THE COMPOUND COUNTER; make sure you know what you're doing!
\setcounter{cmpdmain}{8} 

\begin{scheme}
\replacecmpd{jumped:compound} %% automatically replace TMP1 BUT the autonumbering counter updates to 9!
\replacecmpd{nextjumped:compound} %% automatically replace TMP2
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{hexa}
\caption{This is again something else!}
\label{third:chem:scheme}
\end{scheme}

Compounds \refcmpd{jumped:compound} and \refcmpd{nextjumped:compound} in \ref{third:chem:scheme}. (Yes we manually modified the compound numbering counter after \ref{second:chem:scheme}).



\end{document}