DScribe is a Python package for transforming atomic structures into fixed-size numerical fingerprints. These fingerprints are often called "descriptors" and they can be used in various tasks, including machine learning, visualization, similarity analysis, etc.

For more details and tutorials, visit the homepage at: https://singroup.github.io/dscribe/

import numpy as np
from ase.build import molecule
from dscribe.descriptors import SOAP
from dscribe.descriptors import CoulombMatrix

# Define atomic structures
samples = [molecule("H2O"), molecule("NO2"), molecule("CO2")]

# Setup descriptors
cm_desc = CoulombMatrix(n_atoms_max=3, permutation="sorted_l2")
soap_desc = SOAP(species=["C", "H", "O", "N"], rcut=5, nmax=8, lmax=6, crossover=True)

# Create descriptors as numpy arrays or sparse arrays
water = samples[0]
coulomb_matrix = cm_desc.create(water)
soap = soap_desc.create(water, positions=[0])

# Easy to use also on multiple systems, can be parallelized across processes
coulomb_matrices = cm_desc.create(samples)
coulomb_matrices = cm_desc.create(samples, n_jobs=3)
oxygen_indices = [np.where(x.get_atomic_numbers() == 8)[0] for x in samples]
oxygen_soap = soap_desc.create(samples, oxygen_indices, n_jobs=3)

# Some descriptors also allow calculating derivatives with respect to atomic
# positions
der, des = soap_desc.derivatives(samples, method="auto", return_descriptor=True)

The newest versions of the package are compatible with Python >= 3.6 (tested on 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8). DScribe versions <= 0.2.7 also support Python 2.7. We currently only support Unix-based systems, including Linux and macOS. For Windows-machines we suggest using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). The exact list of dependencies are given in setup.py and all of them will be automatically installed during setup.

The package contains C++ extensions that are automatically compiled during install. On Linux-based systems the compilation tools are typically installed by default, on MacOS you may need to install additional command line tools if facing issues during setup (see common issues in the documentation.

The latest stable release is available through pip: (add the --user flag if root access is not available)

pip install dscribe

To install the latest development version, clone the source code from github and install with pip from local file:

git clone https://github.com/SINGROUP/dscribe.git
cd dscribe
pip install .