Automatic Alignment

---

When you justify Atom labels automatically, ChemDraw breaks the label into tokens. A token consists of an uppercase letter followed by any numbers or lowercase letters. The first token is attached to the atom and the rest of the label appears without obscuring other parts of the chemical structure.

For example, to create N-methylpiperidine, label an atom in cyclohexane with the atom label "NCH₃", which contains the three tokens, "N" and "C" and "H₃". If you label C3, the tokens are placed from left to right because there are bonds to the left of the atom.

If you label C5, the tokens are placed from right to left because there are bonds to the right of the atom:

In ChemDraw Pro, you can force an entire multi-atom label to be a token by defining it as a Nickname. This prevents the label from flipping when applied to the left side of a structure.

For example, if you define the Nickname "CH₃", and label C5 with the combined label and nickname "NCH₃", the final orientation is "CH₃N" instead of "H₃CN". In this case, the Nickname, "CH₃", is a token. For more examples, see "Using Nicknames".

If you label C1, the second and third tokens are placed above the first token since there are bonds below the atom.

If you label C4, the second and third tokens are placed below the first token.