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Did it ever happen to you to need a publication-quality drawing of a Feynman diagram for a paper, without finding any easy-to-use interactive tool to produce it? In this case, FeynCAD is likely to be what you were looking for. 

There are a number of good reasons for using FeynCAD to typeset your Feynman diagrams:

  • FeynCAD outputs high-quality diagrams: drawings are first translated to a series of MetaPost macros, which are in turn used to produce a freely scalable Encapsulated PostScript file

  • FeynCAD is completely user-friendly, with an intuitive and easy-to-use visual interface

  • FeynCAD is exactly WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get): the result of what the user draws is immediately displayed in its final form by the visual interface

  • FeynCAD is well documented: it comes with an extensive manual, an on-line help system, and a set of on-line examples which the user can modify at will

  • FeynCAD is easily customizable: new vertex/line styles can be easily defined by the user, and transparently integrated into the program

  • FeynCAD can be easily interfaced: it inputs/outputs files in a clearly-documented XML format and can be invoked in batch mode without visual interface, making easy its use as a standalone rendering engine for external tools which automatically generate/compute Feynman diagrams.

Unfortunately, so far FeynCAD does not help you in deciding which layout is best for your diagram. However, stay tuned: algorithms to make the job are currently being incorporated into FeynCAD architecture, and their introduction will be finished before the final release of Version 1 is shipped.

[Of course, FeynCAD is not a general-purpose drawing system; however, we mention as a last remark that it can also be successfully “misused” to draw other pictures than just Feynman diagrams, at least to some extent: typical applications can be simple geometrical plots and flow charts. Nice results have been reported in various cases.]

Screenshots

User interface

Feynman diagrams

Other relevant examples of what FeynCAD can do appear in FeynCAD manual: in fact, all its figures have been typeset using FeynCAD itself.

Downloading FeynCAD

Here below you find a list of precompiled binaries of FeynCAD; in principle, they should run out-of-the-box on the corresponding platforms (however, please read the Installation instructions below before starting the program).

Binary packages
Architecture/Operating system Compressed with Gzip Compressed with Bzip2
ix86/Linux (also tested under AMD x86_64/Linux) FeynCAD-1pre1-ix86.tgz
 FeynCAD-1pre1-ix86.tbz2

If no package in the list corresponds to your own combination of architecture/operating system, you will have to download the source package instead, trying to compile it by yourself. Trolltech's Qt libraries (version >= 3.3.2) are needed for a successful compilation. In this case, please refer to FeynCAD manual for further details.

Sources
Architecture/Operating system Compressed with Gzip Compressed with Bzip2
generic/Unix (X11)
 FeynCAD-1pre1.tgz FeynCAD-1pre1.tbz2

Installation instructions

You need a working installation of MetaPost/TeX/LaTeX in your system to be able to use FeynCAD (like TeTeX, which is usually found in the majority of Linux distributions existing nowadays).
 
In addition, FeynCAD relies on a MetaPost macro file to function properly; this file, called FeynCAD.mp, is shipped together with standard FeynCAD distribution. Before being able to successfully use the program, you must make FeynCAD.mp visible to the MetaPost system; this can be achieved in two ways:
  1. installing FeynCAD.mp as a package in the standard MetaPost tree; on typical Linux/TeTeX systems 
  2. ...

Much more detailed instructions about how to install FeynCAD on your computer can be found in FeynCAD manual.

License

FeynCAD is free software, placed under GNU General Public License. Enjoy it!