Molfile plugins act as translators between the on-disk file representations of molecular structures, trajectories, volumetric data sets, and graphics geometry data, and the in-memory representation of these data in VMD. This page contains a list of all of the currently available file reader plugins for VMD. For each plugin, we try to maintain an up-to-date document which explains what limitations the plugin has, whether it reads all data or only some of the data from the file format, any known bugs, and any other useful information, often with links to the file format specifications which were used to develop the plugin.

Calling VMD molfile plugins from your own code

Although the molfile plugins were primarily developed for use within VMD, they can also be used by other scientific software written in C/C++/Fortran. They are provided under the UIUC Open Source License. See the VMD Plugin Programmer's Guide for more information on using VMD plugins in other software.

Molecule Coordinate/Structure File Plugins

Molecular Dynamics Trajectory File Plugins

Volumetric Data/Density/Potential Map Plugins

Graphics Plugins