EGSnrc is a software toolkit to perform Monte Carlo simulation of ionizing radiation transport through matter. It models the propagation of photons, electrons and positrons with kinetic energies between 1 keV and 10 GeV, in homogeneous materials. EGSnrc is an extended and improved version of the Electron Gamma Shower (EGS) software package originally developed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the 1970s. Most notably, it incorporates significant refinements in charged particle transport, better low energy cross sections, and the egs++ class library to model elaborate geometries and particle sources.
The EGSnrc user manuals are available on the EGSnrc web page: http://nrc-cnrc.github.io/EGSnrc/.
EGSnrc is distributed as free software under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public Licence. Please review the LICENSE document before downloading the software. In practice, this licence imposes no restriction on using EGSnrc. However, if you want to further convey verbatim or modified versions of the code, or any work based on any EGSnrc component (including any such work operated remotely over a network), you must do so under the same licence terms. Please [Contact NRC] (http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/solutions/advisory/egsnrc_index.html) if you wish to licence EGSnrc under different terms.
EGSnrc can be installed on computers running Linux, OS X or Windows operating systems. As a general-purpose Monte Carlo toolkit, EGSnrc provides source code and utilities to build and run your own radiation transport simulation applications. To use EGSnrc on any platform you need:
- a Fortran compiler
- a C compiler
- a C++ compiler
- the GNU
makeutility - the Tcl/Tk interpreter and widget toolkit
- the Grace plotting tool
Please read the [installation instructions] (https://github.com/nrc-cnrc/EGSnrc/wiki/Installation-overview) in the wiki for more details about these software components.
Please read the full [installation instructions] (https://github.com/nrc-cnrc/EGSnrc/wiki/Installation-overview) for more details on how to download and properly configure EGSnrc on your computer. In brief, installation involves two steps:
1. Donwload the EGSnrc source code: We recommend using the git
software to obtain the source code. Typing the following git command in
a shell will download EGSnrc to your current working directory:
git clone https://github.com/nrc-cnrc/EGSnrc.git. Alternatively
you can download the EGSnrc directory as a
[zip archive]
(https://github.com/nrc-cnrc/EGSnrc/archive/master.zip)
or a [tar.gz archive]
(https://github.com/nrc-cnrc/EGSnrc/archive/master.tar.gz)
2. Configure EGSnrc for your computer: On a Linux system, you may configure the software with either the [Linux configuration utility] (https://github.com/nrc-cnrc/EGSnrc/releases/download/v2015/EGSnrc-configure-linux) or a configuration shell script, as detailed in the instructions. On OS X you have to use the configuration shell script, as detailed in the instructions. On Windows, you have to use the [Windows configuration utility] (https://github.com/nrc-cnrc/EGSnrc/releases/download/v2015/EGSnrc-configure-windows.exe).
Use the issue tracker to report bugs, inaccuracies or even small typos in the EGSnrc project files. The tracker lets you browse and search all documented issues, comment on open issues, and track their progress. Note that the issue tracker is not meant for technical support; open an issue only if it pertains to an error condition which is precise and reproducible.
You can contribute to the EGSnrc project by implementing new features, creating new data sets, correcting errors, or improving documentation. Feel free to submit small corrections and contributions as issues in the issue tracker. For more extensive contributions, familiarize yourself with git and github, work on your own EGSnrc project fork and submit your changes via a pull request. Note that significant contributions will require a transfer of copyright to the National Research Council of Canada before they can be merged into the EGSnrc distribution.