BODIL is a molecular modeling environment geared to help the user to quickly identify key features of proteins critical to molecular recognition, especially (1) in drug discovery applications, and (2) to understand the structural basis for function. The program incorporates state-of-the-art graphics, sequence and structural alignment methods, among other capabilities needed in modern structure-function-drug target research. BODIL has a flexible design that allows on-the-fly incorporation of new modules, has intelligent memory management, and fast multi-view graphics. A beta version of BODIL and an accompanying tutorial are available at http://www.abo.fi/fak/mnf/bkf/research/johnson/bodil.html.