Hi folks
As we all know, defining a complex geometry in Geant4 can be a hefty task to code up by-hand. It’s nice to be able to import 3D models in using e.g. CADMesh or the built-in geometry XML description.
Still, though, it takes a lot of boilerplate to set up a rudimentary detector system.
I’m wondering–what do folks at CERN do to speed this process up internally? Do you have internal hand-rolled wrappers around Geant4, or are there open-source libraries that can get the job done faster?
It would be hard to capture all of the flexibility Geant offers in a wrapper. But for some sub-disciplines it may be nice to have a list of “wrappers” or “front-ends” for G4 that are useful.
For example: I’m building a small wrapper to make optical ray tracing with 3D geometries. You can specify the “type” of the 3D model (passive, optically active, optical detector, …) and other metadata (material, file name, …).
Geant4 is nice because it’s fast and open-source. We’ve been using pvtrace but it’s incredibly slow.
Best
William