OBCONFORMER(1)

💅 OBCONFORMER(1) — the conformer generator, bestie ✨

okay so this is obconformer, part of the Open Babel family, and it lives in the User's Reference Manual — yes, that's the manual name, we're folding it in right here at the top like a little name tag 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

obconformer — generate conformer coordinates 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

obconformer #-of-conformers #-of-optimization-steps filename
            [forcefield]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So obconformer is literally the tool you reach for when you're doing a conformational study and you need random conformers generated via a Monte Carlo search. That's the whole vibe, no cap 🔥

Here's how it goes: it generates a whole batch of conformers, then it outputs the best conformer out of that batch — but only after it's taken the number of geometry optimization steps you gave it. So you get the glow-up version, not the raw draft 😌

And by default, obconformer uses the MMFF94 force field. Slay. 💅

🧚 EXAMPLES 🧚

      obconformer 250 100 baseconformer.sdf > rotamer1.sdf

So what this does, bestie: it generates the best conformer (out of 250 of them) of baseconformer.sdf and writes it to rotamer1.sdf after 100 geometry optimization steps. Read it, learn it, live it 🫶

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• obabel(1)
• obenergy(1)
• obfit(1)
• obgrep(1)
• obminimize(1)
• obrotate(1)

The web pages for Open Babel can be found at: <https://openbabel.org/> 👑

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Open Babel is developed by a cast of many, including current maintainers Geoff Hutchison, Chris Morley, Michael Banck, and innumerable others who have contributed fixes and additions. For more contributors to Open Babel, see <https://openbabel.org/docs/Introduction/thanks.html> 💜

🍓 COPYRIGHT 🍓

Copyright (C) 1998-2001 by OpenEye Scientific Software, Inc.

Some portions Copyright (C) 2001-2008 by Geoffrey R. Hutchison and other contributors.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation version 2 of the License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

⚠️ fr fr, that warranty bit is not a joke — it's literally all caps in the original, so take it seriously okay 💀

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and that's the whole page, bestie — signed off with the source/version and date, because we don't skip the footer: this was Open Babel 3.2, dated May 26, 2026 🌸✨🎀🦋💖