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Openff interchange

A project (and object) for storing, manipulating, and converting molecular mechanics data.

From openforcefield·Updated June 19, 2026·View on GitHub·

A project (and object) for storing, manipulating, and converting parametrized chemical systems. The project is written primarily in Python, distributed under the MIT License license, first published in 2020. Key topics include: amber, forcefield, gromacs, interoperability, lammps.

Latest release: v0.5.30.5.3
April 30, 2026View Changelog →

OpenFF Interchange

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A project (and object) for storing, manipulating, and converting parametrized chemical systems.

Documentation

Documentation for Interchange, including examples, a brief user guide, release history, and API docs, is available on the OpenFF website. Example notebooks are rendered online among examples from other projects in the OpenFF ecosysytem docs.

How to cite

For instructions on how to cite OpenFF tools or force fields, see our website.

Installation

Recent versions of the OpenFF Toolkit (0.11.0+, released August 2022) install Interchange by default through its Conda package.

Interchange can also be installed manually via mamba (or conda, etc.):

shell
mamba install openff-interchange -c conda-forge

Getting started

The Interchange object serves primarily as a container object for parametrized chemical systems. Its key use case involves SMIRNOFF force fields and chemical topologies prepared via the OpenFF Toolkit. The resulting object stores parametrized chemical systems and provides APIs for export to common formats.

python3
from openff.toolkit import ForceField, Molecule, Quantity # Use the OpenFF Toolkit to generate a molecule object from a SMILES pattern molecule = Molecule.from_smiles("CCO") # Generate a conformer to be used as atomic coordinates molecule.generate_conformers(n_conformers=1) # Convert this molecule to a topology topology = molecule.to_topology() # Define periodicity via box vectors topology.box_vectors = Quantity([4, 4, 4], "nanometer") # Load OpenFF 2.0.0 "Sage" sage = ForceField("openff-2.0.0.offxml") # Create an Interchange object - can also use Interchange.from_smirnoff() out = sage.create_interchange(force_field=sage, topology=topology) # Convert the Interchnage object to an OpenMM System system = out.to_openmm() # or write to GROMACS files out.to_gromacs(prefix="out") # or write to Amber files out.to_amber(prefix="out") # or store as JSON json_blob = out.json()

For more functionality, usage guidelines, and examples, please consult the full documentation

Developing

See the Development guide.

Copyright (c) 2020, Open Force Field Initiative

License

The source code of Interchange is hosted on GitHub and is available under the MIT license (see the file LICENSE). Some parts inherit from code distributed under other licenses, as detailed in LICENSE-3RD-PARTY.

Acknowledgements

Project based on the Computational Molecular Science Python Cookiecutter version 1.2.

Contributors

Showing top 12 contributors by commit count.

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This article is auto-generated from openforcefield/openff-interchange via the GitHub API.Last fetched: 6/29/2026