The generation of multiple conformations is an important step in a number of operations from input to ab initio calculations to providing input files for docking studies. A recent paper compared seven freely available conformer ensemble generators: Balloon (two different algorithms), the RDKit standard conformer ensemble generator, the Experimental-Torsion basic Knowledge Distance Geometry (ETKDG) algorithm, Confab, Frog2 and Multiconf-DOCK DOI, and also provided a dataset of ligand conformations taken from the PDB.

A recent twitter discussion involving Greg Landrum and David Koes prompted Greg to publish a blog post describing conformation generation within RDKit. The post compares using distance geometry to select diverse conformations versus an approach that combines the distance geometry approach with experimental torsion-angle preferences obtained from small-molecule crystallographic data (ETKDG). He also looks at the impact of force-field minimisation.

A really interesting read with code provided.