LCDD: A complete detector description package

LCDD has been developed to provide a complete detector description package for physics detector simulations using Geant4. All aspects of the experimental setup, such as the physical geometry, magnetic fields, and sensitive detector readouts, as well as control of the physics simulations, such as physics processes, interaction models and kinematic limits, are defined at runtime. Users are therefore able to concentrate on the design of the detector system without having to master the intricacies of C++ programming or being proficient in setting up their own Geant4 application. We describe both the XML-based file format and the processors which communicate this information to the underlying Geant4 simulation toolkit.