Interacting with the SWORD package (SoftWare for the Optimization of Radiation Detectors)

We present the first version of software for the optimization of radiation detectors (SWORD): a software package designed to simplify the evaluation of different gamma-ray detector configurations or the process of conducting system architecture studies for Homeland Security and other applications. It is a fully integrated system that uses GEANT4 [2] and MCNPX [3] to conduct Monte Carlo simulations, and can analyze the resulting output in a single step. We discuss in detail the following: the SWORD 3-D graphical tool for interactively creating custom detector and environment designs; the integration of the MCNPX interface, where users can provide an MCNPX input deck and directly push it into the system; and finally the serialization of data into a binary format in order to better manage the large amount of data produced in Monte Carlo simulation.