[Open Babel] conformer generation

[Paul E. <pau...@un...>]

Taking this smiles as input:

O[C@H]1[C@@H](OC2=CC(O)=CC(O)=C2C1=O)C1=CC=C(O)C(O)=C1

I tried to generate some conformers using this line:

obabel input.smi -O conformers.sdf --gen3D --conformer --nconf 4

This gives me a file with only one 3D structure, which is actually the one
obtained from the gen3d option. For some reason no conformers are
generated. I also tried the FF derived searches at no success.

However, I know there are 4 stable conformers: 2 with respect to the
orientation of the dihydroxyphenyl ring and 2 resulting from
axial/equatorial ring flip. The latter probably won't be found by obabel,
but the first 2 should.

Can someone point me to what's going wrong here?!

Thanks, Paul