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### Input formats

OVITO can read the following file formats:

Format name | Description | Data type(s)
--- | --- | ---
LAMMPS data | File format used by the LAMMPS molecular dynamics code. | particles, bonds, angles, dihedrals, impropers
LAMMPS dump | File format used by the LAMMPS molecular dynamics code. OVITO supports both text-based and binary dump files. | particles
LAMMPS dump local | File format written by the dump local command of LAMMPS. OVITO's Load trajectory modifier can read varying bond topology and per-bond quantities from such files generated in reactive molecular dynamics simulations. | bonds
XYZ | Simple column-based text format for particle data, which is documented here. OVITO can read the "extended XYZ" format, which supports arbitrary sets of particle data columns, and can store addtional information such as the simulation cell geometry and boundary conditions. | particles
POSCAR / XDATCAR / CHGCAR | File formats used by the ab initio simulation package VASP. OVITO can import atomistic configurations and also charge density fields from CHGCAR files. | particles, voxel grids
Gromacs GRO | Coordinate file format used by the GROMACS simulation code. | particles
Gromacs XTC | Trajectory file format used by the GROMACS simulation code. | particles
CFG | File format used by the AtomEye visualization program. | particles
NetCDF | Binary format for molecular dynamics data following the AMBER format convention. NetCDF files are produced by the LAMMPS dump netcdf command. | particles
CIF | Crystallographic Information File format as specified by the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr). Parser supports only small-molecule crystal structures. | particles
PDB | Protein Data Bank (PDB) files. | particles
PDBx/mmCIF | The PDBx/mmCIF format stores macromolecular structures and is used by the Worldwide Protein Data Bank. | particles
Quantum Espresso | Input data format used by the Quantum Espresso electronic-structure calculation code. | particles
FHI-aims | Geometry and log-file formats used by the ab initio simulation package FHI-aims. | particles
GSD/HOOMD | Binary format for molecular dynamics data used by the HOOMD-blue code. See GSD (General Simulation Data) format. | particles
CASTEP | File format used by the CASTEP ab initio code. OVITO can read the `.cell`, `.md` and `.geom` formats. | particles
XSF | File format used by the XCrySDen program. | particles, voxel grids
Cube | File format used by the Gaussian simulation package. Specifications of the format can be found here and here. | particles, voxel grids
IMD | File format used by the molecular dynamics code IMD. | particles
DL_POLY | File format used by the molecular simulation package DL_POLY. | particles
GALAMOST | XML-based file format used by the GALAMOST molecular dynamics code. | particles, bonds
VTK (legacy format) | File format used by the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) and the software ParaView. The format is described here. The file reader currently supports only ASCII-based files containing PolyData and UnstructuredGrid data with triangular cells. | triangle meshes
VTI (VTK ImageData) | XML-based file format used by the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) and the software ParaView. The format is described here. The file reader currently supports only a subset of the full format specification and is geared towards files written by the Aspherix simulation code. | voxel grids
VTP (VTK PolyData) | XML-based file format used by the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) and the software ParaView. The format is described here. The file reader currently supports only a subset of the full format specification and is geared towards mesh geometry and particle data files written by the Aspherix simulation code. VTK PolyData blocks consisting of triangle strips or polygons are imported as surface meshes by OVITO. PolyData consisting of vertices only are imported as a set of particles. | surface meshes, particles
VTM (VTK MultiBlock) | XML-based file format used by the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) and the software ParaView. VTK multiblock data files are meta-files that point to a list of VTK XML files, which will all be loaded by OVITO as a single data collection. | any
PVD (ParaView data file) | XML-based file format used by the software ParaView, which describes a trajectory formed by a sequence of individual data files. The file format is described here. | any
OBJ | Common text-based format for storing triangle mesh geometry (see here). | triangle meshes
STL | Another popular format for storing triangle mesh geometry (see here). Note that OVITO supports only STL files in ASCII format. | triangle meshes
PARCAS | Binary file format written by the MD code Parcas developed in K. Nordlund's group at University of Helsinki. | particles
ParaDiS | File format of the ParaDiS discrete dislocation dynamics code. | dislocation lines
oxDNA | Configuration/topology file format used by the oxDNA simulation code for coarse-grained DNA models. | particles, bonds

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