An XML generic detector description system and geometry editor for the ATLAS detector at the LHC

In this paper we describe a system which was developed to describe the ATLAS muon spectrometer, which is based on a generic XML detector description system (ATLAS Generic Detector Description, AGDD), on the PERSINT visualization program and on a series of parsers, respectively converters which build a generic, transient geometry model and translate it into commonly used geometry descriptions like Geant4, the ATLAS GeoModel, ROOT TGeo or others. The presented system permits an easy, self descriptive approach to the detector description problem, intuitive visualization and rapid turn-around, since the results of the description process can be immediately fed into e.g. a Geant4 simulation for rapid prototyping. Examples of the current usage for the ATLAS detector description will be given and further developments needed to meet future requirements will be discussed.