Status:  The detector description project has for the past two years been essentially an infrastructure project.  During this phase we built and tested the GeoModel toolkit, Visualization system, and Hierarchically versioned database; we connected this infrastructure to all of the subsystems within ATLAS and we connected the subsystem descriptions to simulation and reconstruction. 

What we now have is effectively as system where diverse detector descriptions can be plugged into the atlas offline software in a way which parallels the manner in which event generators are "plugged in".  The final steps to be taken are to transmit the geometry configuration from one process space to another by using a database tag as a key to how the complete geometry is built.

This component is now ready to be deployed within ATLAS, following some discussion in software week, during Feb. 2005.   It will allow users to process a file of simulated or recorded real events without needing to do manual configuration, which has proved in the past to be error-prone.

Full satisfaction with this solution cannot be obtained until we bring all vestiges of file-based detector description  into the Oracle; we mean identifier dictionaries, FCAL tube positions, LAr cell boundaries, B Field, & cet.

Excluding this concern, we can say that the main detector description infrastructure components are used throughout ATLAS (LAr simulation with GeoModel is possible since December 2004) and in a maintenance phase.

Future:  The system was built with the flexibility to describe different geometrical configurations and misaligned configurations.  The latest challenges facing ATLAS are to coordinate the tag/freeze/lock of these different configurations and to insure their continued performance even as the DD group produces new vintages.  The description of more realistic and/or more performant geometries will be the future direction of this group, together with dedicated geometrical descriptions of ATLAS during its commissioning activities; for example, beam tests and cosmic ray runs.