Modelling with OpenFF

The OpenFF ecosystem is designed to slotted in to almost any molecular simulation workflow. We distribute both force fields themselves and Python tools to apply them, and our tools are compatible with a wide variety of chemical formats and MD engines.

The basic OpenFF workflow consists of preparing a simulation system with the OpenFF Toolkit (blue boxes in the flowchart below), and then exporting it to your MD engine of choice with OpenFF Interchange (pink):

      • Chemical Inputs

        Molecular identities, coordinates, etc. We support lots of formats: SMILES, SDF, PDB, MOL/MOL2, RDKit Mol, OpenEye OEGraphMol, NumPy Arrays…

      • OpenFF Toolkit Molecule

        A molecular graph, with optional coordinates.

      • OpenFF Toolkit Topology

        A collection of Molecule objects, with optional coordinates and box vectors, representing a molecular system.

        • Torsion refinement with OpenFF BespokeFit

          Automatic refinement of SMIRNOFF force field torsion parameters from quantum chemical calculations.

      • SMIRNOFF Force Field

        We publish our force fields in an engine-agnostic force field format that parametrizes a molecular graph without assigning atom types.

      • OpenFF Toolkit ForceField

        Python representation of a SMIRNOFF force field, with tools for inspection, modification, and storage.

  • OpenFF Interchange

    A parametrized molecular simulation system, complete with force field parameters, chemical identities, box vectors, and coordinates, that can be exported to many different MD engines

  • MD Engines

    OpenMM, GROMACS, Amber, CHARMM, LAMMPS…

Check it out - preparing a molecule in vacuum for simulation in OpenMM just takes a few lines of Python:

from openff.toolkit import Molecule, Topology, ForceField
from openff.interchange import Interchange

paracetamol = Molecule.from_smiles("CC(=O)NC1=CC=C(C=C1)O")
paracetamol.generate_conformers(n_conformers=1)

topology = Topology.from_molecules([paracetamol])

force_field = ForceField("openff-2.0.0.offxml")

interchange = Interchange.from_smirnoff(force_field, topology)

openmm_system = interchange.to_openmm()
openmm_topology = interchange.to_openmm_topology()
openmm_positions = interchange.positions.to_openmm()

The SMIRNOFF Force Field Format

OpenFF force fields are published in the SMIRKS-Native Open Force Field format (SMIRNOFF). SMIRNOFF is a next-generation force field format that’s intended to encode all the information needed to compute a potential energy from any molecule covered by the force field. SMIRNOFF records many important variables that are essential to reproducing the potential energy function used in fitting, but are missing from existing force field definition formats:

  • The actual chemistry a parameter should be assigned to, which SMIRNOFF records with SMIRKS strings

  • The non-bonded cutoff distance, combining rules, and long-range corrections (such as PME)

  • The exact form of the function used for bonded terms

  • Constraints that should be used with the force field, including those with hydrogens

  • Non-bonded interactions between neighboring atoms that are excluded or scaled based on their through-bond connectivity

  • The water model

  • The model used to compute partial charges

  • The model used to compute any implicit solvent

Many MD engines treat these as details of the simulation rather than of the force field, but varying them changes the potential energy of the system so we think they are best thought of as part of the force field. SMIRNOFF also does away with atom types: each parameter is just applied directly to the relevant atoms via a SMIRKS string. This means we can fine-tune a specific interaction without incurring the complexity cost of creating a new atom type or duplicating other parameters.

OpenFF maintains both the SMIRNOFF format specification as well as software tooling to apply SMIRNOFF force fields to systems for simulation in most mainstream MD engines. OpenFF’s SMIRNOFF force fields are distributed in the openff-forcefields package (green in the flowchart), and anyone can publish their own SMIRNOFF force field as described in the FAQ. The OpenFF Toolkit documentation describes the SMIRNOFF format in more detail.

Preparing a Simulation System

The OpenFF Toolkit provides tools for assembling chemical systems out of components prepared elsewhere. The pinnacle of this process is the Topology Python class. In OpenFF-speak, a topology is a model-agnostic collection of molecules, possibly in a box. It does not include any force field parameters or other model-specific values, and so can be easily parametrized and simulated with any force field. This makes comparative force field studies really easy, as you just prepare the topology once and can then parametrize it as many times as you like with any SMIRNOFF force field!

A topology is essentially a collection of Molecule objects with some extra system-level information like positions and box vectors. Molecules represent a single molecule as a molecular graph; atoms connected by bonds. We provide tools for loading both individual molecules and entire topologies from a wide variety of file formats. For details, see the Molecule and Topology API docs, and the Cookbook: Every way to make a Molecule.

The OpenFF Toolkit avoids providing tools for system generation because we want to focus on what we’re good at: making force fields better. But we encourage the wider modelling community to build tools for things like solvation, bilayer creation and docking on top of the OpenFF Toolkit!

The Toolkit also provides the ForceField class, which just loads a SMIRNOFF force field into Python-world. Parametrizing and Simulating explains more on how that works.

The Toolkit is distributed in the openff-toolkit package and is represented in blue on the flowchart.

Parametrizing and Simulating

OpenFF Interchange is our package for exporting simulation input data for an MD engine. The Interchange API mostly consists of the Interchange class, an instance of which represents a fully parametrized simulation system. You can call any of the to_<format> methods to produce input files to simulate that system in your MD engine of choice; OpenMM, Amber, GROMACS, and LAMMPS are all supported!

The main way to produce an Interchange is to combine a Topology with a ForceField using the Interchange.from_smirnoff() method. Interchange also implements a few other from_<format> methods that allow it to ingest parametrized systems from other MD engines! While these other formats usually do not provide enough information for Interchange to produce a Topology and then apply a different force field, Interchange can export the pre-parametrized system to other formats. So Interchange doesn’t just export OpenFF stuff to MD engines, it also converts between MD engines!

Once you have your MD engine input files from Interchange, you just simulate them in the usual way — most MD engines have excellent tutorials and documentation on how to do this. Interchange is distributed in the openff-interchange package and is represented in pink on the flowchart.

Fine-Tuning a Force Field

Sometimes, general force fields like those we publish just aren’t good enough, and you need to refine parameters for a new molecule. OpenFF BespokeFit is a tool that automatically identifies torsions that could use refinement, computes a quantum chemical torsion drive around those dihedrals, and refines a force field to reproduce that accurate torsion drive. It uses all sorts of clever tricks like fragmentation, multithreading, and caching to make this refinement fast, reproducible, and restartable, as well as to avoid repeating work on molecules that share chemistry. BespokeFit has the flexibility to work with a variety of quantum chemical engines via QCEngine. It uses a general SMIRNOFF force field as its starting point, and adds new terms to describe the new torsions. If you refine a torsion that’s common to a line of molecules that you’re interested in, you can use the resulting force field for the entire line!

BespokeFit uses a CLI interface to make it easy to use. It can be a bit involved, so to get started, see the Quick start or our YouTube tutorial. BespokeFit is distributed in the openff-bespokefit package and is represented in orange on the flowchart.