I have vasp software license and I would like to download the four essential files
POTCAR INCAR KPOINTS and POSCAR to learn how to calculated some properties for example Si.
May be I am missing some information regarding the POTCAR file from material project is POTCAR.spec can anyone explain to me why this file is not same as the POTCAR file as the example in the learning material from vasp software. Do I have to download this file differently. I hope to get some advice to learn vasp calculation
the POTCARs in VASP are covered by the licence agreement, so they cannot be shared at all. If you have a VASP licence, you should of course also have access to the potentials and can choose the correct one based on the information in POTCAR.spec. It is of course necessary to know which potential was used to create the uploaded data. That is the purpose of the POTCAR.spec files.
There are a few POTCARS that can be downloaded from the wiki to do the examples, but in general they cannot be made available by the materials project.