Hey everyone,I am going to teach an OpticStudio course at a university and they have an academic license for all Ansys products including OpticStudio.However, what surprised me is that as far as I understood it is not possible for students or me to install and use OpticStudio locally, without a remote connection to the university Ansys server.I distinctly remember that a few years ago I did an online course at a university and got an OpticStudio license which I could use without any problems fully locally.Did the policy change? Is it not possible anymore to just have OpticStudio run locally with an academic license on your private PC? Best regards,Mikayel. 

I’m trying to create a curved surface within the zemax part designer. Whenever I expose a point on my 2D sketch the expose point parameter greys out on all the points in the sketch. I am unable to check or uncheck the box for any of the points. I would like to expose all 4 points in the 2D sketch. Any idea why I’m unable to expose all the points.  *Here is an image of the sketch. The I cannot check the expose point. *Here shows a point that was exposed but I’m unable to uncheck the box.

Hello fellow Zemax-ers!As we continue our integration efforts into Ansys systems, the Zemax Community is preparing to migrate into the Ansys Learning Forum (ALF), found within the Ansys Innovation Space (AIS). With the move happening soon, we are closing the Zemax Community to new registrations starting next week, March 24th.I will post more details about the migration of the forums soon, but in the meantime, please find some prepared FAQs below. Let me know if you have other questions!Why ALF?The platform is already the home of the Lumerical and Speos forums, so now all of Ansys Optics will be in the same place! Also, posts within the ALF space are parsed into AnsysGPT alongside knowledgebase articles and online tutorials, making it easier for you to find the answers to your questions all in one place!Who can sign up for ALF?Anyone! Unlike ACSS (discussed here), AIS has no restrictions on who can sign up. All you need is an email address, though we recommend using your work/university

Share your tips & tricks for efficiently using OpticStudio with the community!  There are lots of little ways that we adapt our use of OpticStudio to streamline our work. These are usually learned over time, from colleagues, or from technical support, but they aren't typically found in other product education resources. You might have a favorite keyboard shortcut, saved settings for a particular analysis, a macro that automates 3 steps in your process tied to a hotkey, or a million other ideas. Help your fellow OpticStudio users and learn some new tricks yourself.

Hello everyone,I was wondering if there was an existing operand in the Merit function editor that would give the minimal value of other operands in the merit function.To give an example, I am currently doing a Merit function which computes the encircled energies at different Field of views and at different wavelengths. I would like to optimize the minimal value of all these operands. I don’t really care what the other vaues are, I am just targetting on increasing the minimal value as much as possible. I checked in the operand list in the built-in Help from Zemax but didn’t find anything that seemed to work for my application.Thank you very much !

I have a sequential mode design that contains a black box component. I converted the sequential mode design to non-sequential mode, but the black box is not converted. The non-sequential component editor box does not have the black box. What can I do to have the black box insert into the non-sequential component editor box?

Hello everyone! I am trying to perform a study of tolerances in an optical system in which my criterion is the RMS Spot Size. If possible, I would like the GEO radius for one of the fields not to exceed a certain value (with reference: vertex). In any case, it is not possible for me to execute the tolerancing because of a problem that I show you here: “Nominal Criterion cannot be computed”.Do you have any suggestion?Thank you!

Hi there friends from the OpticStudio community,Today I have a question related to a general optics design problem.I’m trying to generate a system similar to what is presented in the following publication:https://opg.optica.org/ol/fulltext.cfm?uri=ol-42-6-1043&id=360492In essence, the design problem consists of generating a high NA system which can be used to image molecules or atoms in a vacuum environment. The approach used in this case consists of using a Weierstrass type solid immersion lens in combination with two aspherical surfaces in order to generate a collimated beam for an on axis point object.Since the geometry of the Weierstrass geometry is fixed, the only degrees of freedom that I have are the parameters related to my two aspherical surfaces. In the following figure you can take a look to the system I have at the moment:In this case, I optimized this system in the afocal configuration with the merit function defined to have a well corrected planar wavefront. After tha

Hello, Not quite sure this community is still active?I want to have a lens system which can form the image from infinity to a limited distance as show below.  As you can see that the concave lens system will reduce the input field of view.  How can I have a compact concave lens system which can form the image from infinity to a limited distance and keep the same field of view as the input.  Can you have some suggestions or initial configuration for recommendation?Thank you ! BL 

So I have a NSC system consisting in multiple mirrors and with 3 Detectors. I was using the ray trace tool with only 1 analysis ray and then optimizing with the Merit Function editor until some weird optimization started to happen. Then I read this sentence in the Help system: Note the segments NSRA is not listed in same order as in ZRD. For example, for a same ray, the segment with Seg# =17 in NSRA is not same to the 17th segment listed in ZRD.  How can I know the number of the segment I want to optimize then for the NSRA operand? Regards

I created a dome shell object by subtracting smaller sphere from bigger sphere and also removed the rear half with a big cylinder object. This is done with Boolean operation A-B-C (A: big sphere, B: smaller sphere, C: cylinder).Then I applied Gaussian surface scatter to both side surface (sig=0.25) to make some wide beam angle scatter like tis picture. But problem when the source is moved to Z=0 where the sphere half plane is, the scattering is gone. I guess this is caused by source being in the parent object region though parents are shifted away or disabled for ray trace. I tried moving source object below the Boolean object and entered boolean object number in “inside of” column, but that doesn’t make it work either.I had similar issue with Boolean before when I tried making TIR lens. It was found I should avoid putting the source at the boundary of original parent object or inside. But this scattering issue with Boolean seems like new to me. Any idea if this is a bug or there is wa

Dear all, I would like to investigate the single-mode fiber coupling efficiency using Physical Optics Propagation in function of the fiber tilt angle. I would like to use the Universal Plot to see its sensitivity, and afterwards see its effect during a complete tolerance analysis together with other tolerances (both in the RSS estimate as well as in a Monte-Carlo simulation).However, it seems that either using a coordinate break before the fiber surface, or using the ‘Tilt’ surface as the final surface (as was done in the angled-fiber article but without using POP) does not affect the POP fiber coupling calculation. The ‘tilt about X/Y (deg)’, inside the POP ‘fiber data’ can of course be used to set the tilt, but this value can (as far as I’m aware) not be used for plotting or tolerancing.Is there some other way to easily plot and tolerance this fiber tilt when using POP, without having to use a custom macro or ZOS-API code? Thanks for any input,Best regards,Indy

Dear OpticStudio Users, We’ve identified an issue in Ansys Zemax OpticStudio 2025 R1 when trying to open the Help Files, either when clicking on the toolbar icon or when hitting F1.Temporary Workarounds: Use the online Ansys Help for OpticStudio: OpticStudio Online Help, or  Use the pdf version. We are actively working on a fix and will provide an update soon. Thank you for your patience and understanding. If you have questions, feel free to contact support or comment below. Best regards, Tom Pickering 

In the Vignetting diagram analysis, the doc states : “Ray Density The Ray Density specifies the number of rays to be traced. The more rays traced, the greater the accuracy, although the computation time increases. For a Ray Density of n, OpticStudio traces a grid of (2n+1) x (2n + 1) Rays at each Field Point. The Ray Density minimum value is 5.”It also mentions that “This feature is appropriate for rotationally symmetric lenses”.My qyestion then is how is the grid of rays generated with (2n+1)x(2x+1) rays on a circular pupil ? A square grid is generated, and the rays outside the inscribed circle are dropped before the ray tracing ? in other words, about (2n+1)*(2n+1)*pi/4 rays are actually used ?

Hello everyone,I need to define a partially coherent source in Zemax, which I then want to homogenize using a light rod. The source parameters are:    •    Size: 32 × 14 mm    •    Divergence: 4 × 1 mrad    •    Coherence length: 0.1 mmI need to homogenize the beam using a rod to achieve a final beam size of 100 × 10 mm.Is there a way to properly define such a partially coherent source in Zemax? What approach would you recommend for modeling the homogenization process?Thanks in advance for any insights!

Hello there friends from the zemax community,I was wondering if someone could give me some guidance with a situation I have.I have a finite conjugate system which images a single on-axis point to another on axis point. To perform this on-axis imaging, I have optimized a single aspherical surface.In object space I have a point with a half angle of 30 degrees and on the image side the cone of incident angles is equal to 6 degrees (half divergence).This is how my current system looks like: From this you can see that the on-axis performance is diffraction limited in this configuraiton.Now, I am interested in evaluating the performance of this system but on the reverse direction, i.e, I flip the entire system. Now I have a point source with a cone divergence of 6 degrees. This is how the system looks like: Oection the performance is far from ideal. In my opinion this is because in the forward case, even though the imaging performance is diffraction limited, the rays in image space do not re

Hi Everyone,I am trying to get the seidel aberrations and ray spot diagram for a surface of which I have only the interferometric data (captured by a zygo white light interferometer and processed in their MX software). I think I have successfully imported the data from the interferometer’s software to Zemax as the peak to valley sort of matches. But I am seeing no difference in the ray spot size and seidel aberrations. I am uploading the link to the files as it is a big one (both Zemax and interferometric data). Kindly help me or suggest what the issue is. Zemax File Thank you.  

Hi fellow Zemax-ers, I am looking to model an optical system in sequential mode with the following characteristics. I think this could be done pretty straightforwardly in non-sequential mode, but sequential would likely be more efficient. The optical system would have a series of elements after the object before hitting a 50:50 beamsplitter (and I am only concerned about the transmitted arm in this direction)After the beamsplitter, it would go through some series of lensesThen there would be a mirror that could be flat or curved that would reflect the light so that it would go back to the beamsplitterI would only care about the reflected arm after the beamsplitterAfter the beamsplitter it would go through another series of lenses before forming the imageThe challenge is I want to be able to tilt or decenter the flat/curved mirror (through different configurations) that reflects the light to form the double pass. I’ve looked at examples such as the 50:50 beamsplitter but that doesn’t re

Any thoughts as to how I can insert a radially-gradient neutral density filter at an intermediate focus?https://reynardcorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Reynard-Corp_Bullseye-Apodizing_Datasheet.pdfUltimately, I’m trying generate PSFs that account for diffraction at the aperture.Thanks!

Hello, I have a question similar to post “dichroic mirror in NSC mode”.  In that question, the supplied example is not in one single configuration, which the emitted light and the excitation light are seperated. I am having trouble simulating the same configuaration but with one dichroic mirror. I followed the example “How to model fluorescence using bulk scattering”, but the coating on the dichroic mirror does not seem to function on the back surface (Sample side, Green in the figure). Even if I put a reflective surface at the back surface, the incoming ray (black in the figure) from the source side will hit that surface and reflect away. How should I avoid this sitation?  I would like to have the source sending ray transmitting through a 45 degree dichroic mirror, hitting the sample, reflect back to the other surface of the dichroic, and reflect to 90 degree respect to source (upward in the figure). Is that possible? It seems to be an easy task, but I don’t have a solution.  Thank yo

In non-sequential mode, I’ve created a circle of rectangles arranged around a light source (not shown). I’ve used the Paramter “Tilt About Y” to orient the rectangles’ faces toward the center. Now, I’m trying to tilt the rectangles 10° toward the central axis, but I’ve only been able to achieve this for objects #4  (highlighted) and #10. When I attempt to tilt the other rectangles forward, e.g. object #1 (centered in the screenshot), all I can accomplish is to rotate the rectangles clockwise or counterclockwise. Changing the values in “Tilt About X” and “Tilt About Z” seems to have the same effect. How can I make all the rectangles tilt towards the center, just like #4 and #10? 

In some surface types (e.g. ABCD or Conjugate), the standard parameters (e.g. Radius and Conic) are ‘blanked out’. A value entered into those cells is instantly erased returning the cell to blank.Can this behaviour be programmed in a UDS?CY

I would find it very helpful if the face coating could be added as an option in the ray database viewer.Also, calculating the relative intensity from the prior surface is quite handy. An example made in excel is shown below. Thanks for considering!-John

In my optical setup, I have a standard 4f setup with  plano-convex lenses with focal lenght of 300mm . After focusing it, I found out that i have a huge field curvature. To reduce this i designed a setup with two sets of planocovex lenses with focal lenght  of 600mm (to have almost the same propagation lenght of 1200mm) thereby reducing the petzval field curvature.  Eventhough the field curvature was reduced by a factor of 3, the field curvature is still signinfiact. The 3rd approach was to design custom lenses. I was working with 2 pair of lenses and was using REAR and FCUR to reduce the field curvature. When i look into the seidel graph there is no field curvature. But when i focus it using a paraxial lens, i can see there is noticable field curvature. Is there any was to reduce this further atleast lower than the half of the rayleigh length.

Hello everyone, I'm interested in finding out more details on the Huygens PSF method. The OpticStudio Help claims that 'a grid of rays is launched through the optical system'. Here I would like to know, what algorithm is used for the actual propagation. How are the abberations of all optical components accounted for? Are they propagated as rays, by paraxial propagation or by actually using Huygens formula? It would be very helpful if anybody could clarify this detail. Thanks a lot in advance, best wishes