LAMMPS non-features
===================

LAMMPS is designed to be a fast, parallel engine for molecular
dynamics (MD) simulations.  It provides only a modest amount of
functionality for setting up simulations and analyzing their output.

Specifically, LAMMPS was not conceived and designed for:

* being run through a GUI
* building molecular systems, or building molecular topologies
* assign force-field coefficients automagically
* perform sophisticated analysis of your MD simulation
* visualize your MD simulation interactively
* plot your output data

Although over the years these limitations have been somewhat
reduced through features added to LAMMPS or external tools
that either closely interface with LAMMPS or extend LAMMPS.

Here are suggestions on how to perform these tasks:

* **GUI:** LAMMPS can be built as a library and a Python wrapper that wraps
  the library interface is provided.  Thus, GUI interfaces can be
  written in Python (or C or C++ if desired) that run LAMMPS and
  visualize or plot its output.  Examples of this are provided in the
  python directory and described on the :doc:`Python <Python_head>` doc
  page.  Also, there are several external wrappers or GUI front ends.
* **Builder:** Several pre-processing tools are packaged with LAMMPS.  Some
  of them convert input files in formats produced by other MD codes such
  as CHARMM, AMBER, or Insight into LAMMPS input formats.  Some of them
  are simple programs that will build simple molecular systems, such as
  linear bead-spring polymer chains.  The moltemplate program is a true
  molecular builder that will generate complex molecular models.  See
  the :doc:`Tools <Tools>` doc page for details on tools packaged with
  LAMMPS.  The `Pre/post processing page <http:/lammps.sandia.gov/prepost.html>`_ of the LAMMPS website
  describes a variety of 3rd party tools for this task.  Furthermore,
  some LAMMPS internal commands allow to reconstruct, or selectively add
  topology information, as well as provide the option to insert molecule
  templates instead of atoms for building bulk molecular systems.
* **Force-field assignment:** The conversion tools described in the previous
  bullet for CHARMM, AMBER, and Insight will also assign force field
  coefficients in the LAMMPS format, assuming you provide CHARMM, AMBER,
  or BIOVIA (formerly Accelrys) force field files. The tools
  `ParmEd <https://parmed.github.io/ParmEd/html/index.html>`_ and
  `InterMol <https://github.com/shirtsgroup/InterMol>`_ are particularly
  powerful and flexible in converting force field and topology data
  between various MD simulation programs.
* **Simulation analysis:** If you want to perform analysis on-the-fly as
  your simulation runs, see the :doc:`compute <compute>` and
  :doc:`fix <fix>` doc pages, which list commands that can be used in a
  LAMMPS input script.  Also see the :doc:`Modify <Modify>` doc page for
  info on how to add your own analysis code or algorithms to LAMMPS.
  For post-processing, LAMMPS output such as :doc:`dump file snapshots <dump>` can be converted into formats used by other MD or
  post-processing codes.  To some degree, that conversion can be done
  directly inside of LAMMPS by interfacing to the VMD molfile plugins.
  The :doc:`rerun <rerun>` command also allows to do some post-processing
  of existing trajectories, and through being able to read a variety
  of file formats, this can also be used for analyzing trajectories
  from other MD codes.  Some post-processing tools packaged with
  LAMMPS will do these conversions.  Scripts provided in the
  tools/python directory can extract and massage data in dump files to
  make it easier to import into other programs.  See the
  :doc:`Tools <Tools>` doc page for details on these various options.
* **Visualization:** LAMMPS can produce NETPBM, JPG or PNG snapshot images
  on-the-fly via its :doc:`dump image <dump_image>` command and pass
  them to an external program, `FFmpeg <https://www.ffmpeg.org>`_ to generate
  movies from them.  For high-quality, interactive visualization there are
  many excellent and free tools available.  See the `Other Codes page <http://lammps.sandia.gov/viz.html>`_ page of the LAMMPS website for
  visualization packages that can use LAMMPS output data.
* **Plotting:** See the next bullet about Pizza.py as well as the
  :doc:`Python <Python_head>` doc page for examples of plotting LAMMPS
  output.  Scripts provided with the *python* tool in the tools
  directory will extract and massage data in log and dump files to make
  it easier to analyze and plot.  See the :doc:`Tools <Tools>` doc page
  for more discussion of the various tools.
* **Pizza.py:** Our group has also written a separate toolkit called
  `Pizza.py <http://pizza.sandia.gov>`_ which can do certain kinds of
  setup, analysis, plotting, and visualization (via OpenGL) for LAMMPS
  simulations.  It thus provides some functionality for several of the
  above bullets.  Pizza.py is written in `Python <http://www.python.org>`_
  and is available for download from `this page <http://www.cs.sandia.gov/~sjplimp/download.html>`_.


.. _lws: http://lammps.sandia.gov
.. _ld: Manual.html
.. _lc: Commands_all.html
