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# About

ASE is an Atomic Simulation Environment written in the Python programming language with the aim of setting up, steering, and analyzing atomistic simulations. The ASE has been constructed with a number of “design goals” that make it:

- Easy to use:

  Setting up an atomistic total energy calculation or molecular dynamics simulation with ASE is simple and straightforward. ASE can be used via a `graphical user interface`, Command line tool and the Python language. Python scripts are easy to follow (see What is Python? for a short introduction). It is simple for new users to get access to all of the functionality of ASE.

- Flexible:

  Since ASE is based on the Python scripting language it is possible to perform very complicated simulation tasks without any code modifications. For example, a sequence of calculations may be performed with the use of simple “for-loop” constructions. There exist ASE modules for performing many standard simulation tasks.

- Customizable:

  The Python code in ASE is structured in modules intended for different purposes. There are `ase.calculators` for calculating energies, forces and stresses, `ase.md` and `ase.optimize` modules for controlling the motion of atoms, `constraints` objects and filters for performing `nudged-elastic-band` calculations etc. The modularity of the object-oriented code make it simple to contribute new functionality to ASE.

- Pythonic:

  It fits nicely into the rest of the Python world with use of the popular NumPy package for numerical work (see Numeric arrays in Python for a short introduction). The use of the Python language allows ASE to be used both interactively as well as in scripts.

- Open to participation:

  The CAMPOS Atomic Simulation Environment is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 or any later version. See the files :git:`COPYING` and :git:`COPYING.LESSER` which accompany the downloaded files, or see the license at GNU’s web server at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/. Everybody is invited to participate in using and developing the code.