Recent advances in sequencing technologies have revolutionized genetic studies. 
Although high-coverage sequencing can uncover most variants present in the 
sequenced sample, low-coverage sequencing is appealing for its cost 
effectiveness. Here, we present AbCD (arbitrary coverage design) to aid the 
design of sequencing-based studies. AbCD is a user-friendly interface providing 
pre-estimated effective sample sizes, specific to each minor allele frequency 
category, for designs with arbitrary coverage (0.5-30×) and sample size (20-10 
000), and for four major ethnic groups (Europeans, Africans, Asians and African 
Americans). In addition, we also present two software tools: ShotGun and 
DesignPlanner, which were used to generate the estimates behind AbCD. ShotGun is 
a flexible short-read simulator for arbitrary user-specified read length and 
average depth, allowing cycle-specific sequencing error rates and realistic read 
depth distributions. DesignPlanner is a full pipeline that uses ShotGun to 
generate sequence data and performs initial SNP discovery, uses our previously 
presented linkage disequilibrium-aware method to call genotypes, and, finally, 
provides minor allele frequency-specific effective sample sizes. ShotGun plus 
DesignPlanner can accommodate effective sample size estimate for any combination 
of high-depth and low-depth data (for example, whole-genome low-depth plus 
exonic high-depth) or combination of sequence and genotype data [for example, 
whole-exome sequencing plus genotyping from existing Genomewide Association 
Study (GWAS)].