# OVITO Python Reference

This manual describes the Python programming interface of the OVITO Pro desktop application and the standalone `ovito` Python package. This programming interface lets you integrate OVITO’s computing and rendering capabilities in external Python programs or extend the OVITO Pro desktop application with new user-defined data processing and visualization function.

You can access this manual from the Help menu of OVITO Basic and OVITO Pro or online by going to https://docs.ovito.org/python/.

## Topics

- Introduction
- Installation
- High-level API overview
- File I/O
- Data pipelines
- Data model
- Manipulating data
- User-defined modifiers
- User-defined file readers
- User-defined viewport layers
- Rendering & visualization
- Advanced topics
- Code examples

## Python Module Reference

- `ovito`
- `ovito.data`
- `ovito.io`
- `ovito.io.ase`
- `ovito.io.lammps`
- `ovito.modifiers`
- `ovito.pipeline`
- `ovito.traits`
- `ovito.vis`