The blackboxes and the calibration samples are generated in three steps:
1) Feynman diagrams (matrix elements) are calculated to obtain the rate for a particular short-distance physics production process, such as quark-antiquark annihilation into two photons (or gluinos!) This can be done with (for example)
or other matrix element programs. Here some additional comments about parton level event generators.
2) The short distance physics is “evolved” to long-distance physics, accounting for the conversion of quarks and gluons into jets of hadrons, decays of tau leptons, and other processes of importance. For these blackboxes, this is done with Pythia 6.4, though other programs including Herwig are available for this purpose.
3) The resulting hadrons and lepton and photons are run through a program called PGS (Pretty Good Simulation), written by John Conway (UC Davis) which serves as a simulated detector. Jet reconstruction and lepton identification are done at this stage. Further details on PGS can be found at the above webpage. On the wiki, there is also information about the specific parameters of the detector, how it treats and identifies various physics objects, and a discussion of triggering. The resulting data files can be read by eye and are discussed in detail on the data file format page.