1.3. Graphical User Interfaces (GUI)

Currently, there is no native graphical user interface (GUI) developed by the ORCA developers. However, there are several programs that provide functionalities to create ORCA inputs and read, and visualize ORCA output files. Some useful programs are outlined in Table 1.1 and some applications can be found at the ORCA tutorials website.

Warning

None of the programs mentioned are developed by the ORCA team. We can therefore not guarantee their functionality. Please contact the developers of the respective program in case of problems and feature requests.

Table 1.1 Selected programs that may be used as GUI to ORCA.

Program	Platform	Comment
Avogadro 2	Windows, Linux, MacOS	3D molecule builder, creation of ORCA input, visualization of ORCA outputs.
ChimeraX	Windows, Linux, MacOS	Visualization of ORCA outputs. Very powerful visualization suite. The SEQCROW plugin is very useful. It can be downloaded from the Tools/More\(\rightarrow\)Tools menu.
Chemcraft	Windows, Linux	3D molecule builder, creation of ORCA input, visualization of ORCA outputs. For Linux, we recommend to use the Windows version via a virtual machine.

Note

The ORCA enhanced version of Avogadro 1 was not further developed or tested for ORCA 6 and beyond! We recommend to try Avogadro 2 instead.