Chair Projection
The chair projection draws a cyclohexane chair conformation: six hidden ring carbons connected by chair-shaped bonds, with one axial and one equatorial substituent on every ring position. Substituents start as H labels you can rename, and a Flip Chair action swaps every axial group to equatorial and back.
Place a chair
Open the projection tool flyout in the toolbar (shortcut J) and pick from the chair row: Chair or Chair (flipped). The two variants differ only in which ring flap points up. Click the canvas to place the chair at that point.
After placement, Molkit switches to the Select tool with the whole chair selected, so you can move it right away.
The three front ring bonds draw bolder than the back bonds to suggest depth. You can turn this off in the properties panel.
Edit axial and equatorial substituents
Each ring carbon carries two substituents: an axial bond drawn straight up or down, and an equatorial bond angled outward. Both default to H.
Double-click any substituent label to open the label editor, then type a replacement such as OH, Cl, or CH3. Single-element labels keep their chemical identity; compound labels are treated as text on a carbon base atom.
Ring carbons are hidden by default. To put a heteroatom in the ring, click a ring corner with the Select tool to select that atom, then double-click it to open the label editor. The Show ring labels option in the properties panel displays all six ring atom labels at once.
Flip the ring
Select the chair, open the Projection Properties panel, and click Flip Chair under Actions. The flip inverts the ring flaps and exchanges every axial substituent with its equatorial partner, matching a real ring flip: axial groups become equatorial and equatorial groups become axial. The whole operation is one undo step.
Projection Properties panel
Selecting a ring atom of the chair opens the Projection Properties panel. Its chair section offers:
- Ring: Width, Height, and Flap Height sliders control the ring geometry.
- Bonds: Thickness, Bold Width, Axial Length, and Equatorial Length.
- Style: line color (swatch plus hex field with a reset button), Bold front bonds, and Show ring labels.
- Actions: the Flip Chair button.
Double-click any slider to reset it to its default value. Slider changes relayout the chair immediately, repositioning all substituents to match.