  During 1996, the SLD collaboration completed construction and began operation
of a new charge-coupled device (CCD) vertex detector (VXD3). Since then, its
performance has been studied in detail and a new topological vertexing
technique has been developed. In this paper, we discuss the design of VXD3,
procedures for aligning it, and the tracking and vertexing improvements that
have led to its world-record performance.
