This manual describes a library for aerosol kinetics and transport, called CADS (Cantera Aerosol Dynamics Simulator), which employs a section-based approach for describing the particle size distributions. CADS is based upon Cantera, a set of C++ libraries and applications that handles gas phase species transport and reactions. The method uses a discontinuous Galerkin formulation to represent the particle distributions within each section and to solve for changes to the aerosol particle distributions due to condensation, coagulation, and nucleation processes. CADS conserves particles, elements, and total enthalpy up to numerical round-off error, in all of its formulations. Both 0-D time dependent and 1-D steady state applications (an opposing-flow flame application) have been developed with CADS, with the initial emphasis on developing fundamental mechanisms for soot formation within fires. This report also describes the 0-D application, TDcads, which models a time-dependent perfectly stirred reactor.