  Effective is a C++ library which provides the user a toolbox to study the
effective action of an arbitrary field theory. From the field content, gauge
groups and representations an appropriate action is generated symbolically. The
effective potential, mass spectrum, field couplings and vacuum expectation
values are then obtained automatically; tree level results are obtained
analytically while many tools, both numeric and analytic, provide a variety of
approaches to deal with the one-loop corrections. This article provides a guide
for users to who wish to analyze their own models using Effective. This is done
by presenting the code required and describing the physics assumptions behind
the code. The library can be extended in many ways and discussion of several
such extensions is also provided.
