I’m trying to make a relation between zernike polynomials that describe spherical aberrations and laser beam diameter, glass thickness and focal length of the lens.     I read from as source that the eight zernike term  for a mirror can be given as C8=D^4/[3072* wavelength*(focal length^3)] where D is mirror diameter.  Is there a similar formula for a lens? if no,how do you advise i go about it on zemax?

Hello, I am trying to consider in my simulation in non-sequential mode the homogenizing behavior by optical components of laser radiation. I use fiber1.dll as source for this and had to realize that in my case I have to set the number of analyzing beams very high depending on the detector resolution to exclude measurement errors. As a result, however, my simulations take a lot of time. I recently came across the article "Understanding Sobol sampling" here, which explains the "signal to noise ratio" in this regard, pretty much providing the reason why I am forced to put up with such long simulation durations. On the other hand, sobol sampling could help me, but unfortunately I couldn't find any source files similar to fiber1 that use sobol sampling and wanted to ask if there are any that are accessible?Best regards,Torsten

HI everyoneHow do I use PSF to plot MTF in MATLAB?The resulting plot may differ from the commonly used MTF plot. How to plot the MTF with separate tangential (TAN) and sagittal (SAG) components? 

Hello, I have an object telecentric imaging system and I would like to tolerance its telecentricity.I have simulated the object moving in z using 2 configurations for the two object positions. My idea was to generate a merit function that calculates the magnification for each configuration and ask the difference between the two to remain below a certain value. Is this good enough or does someone have a better proposition? Thank you

I’m developping a telecentric lens.I would like to know how I can get the telecentricity error in degrees…..I didn’t find any output about this in Opticstudio reports 

hi there,I would like to do kinds of simulation about the risk of light leakage out of seal that integrated with optical system. Is it possible to get any preliminary results from simulation to predict the light leakage? Or is there any experience or examples for this kinda simulation/scenario? Thanks Doris 

Good morning,in the transition from Zemax OpticStudio to Ansys OpticStudio, our Account number has been changed (old account number is LXXXXXX, new account number is AXXXXXXX). Wanting to open a telephone assistance call, I find myself unable to do so. Can someone help me? Thanks

Hi,I am having a weird issue in non sequential ray tracing. rays from a source files ignore a paraxial lens and create unfocused rays on a sensor. Only direct rays are affected. If they are scattered or reflected by a surface i dont see this issue. I have checked that ray never ignore object. Anyone has any idea what is going on ? purple rays ignore my paraxial/ lensblue rays from a diode source dont have this issue.white speckled rays are due to the ray ignoring the paraxial lens 

I am trying to optimize a lens prescription based on RMS Spot Radius at a specific distance.  Set the image plane to 500mm, in the merit function I use the operand RSCE and target RMS Spot Radius to 16.25mm. In Spot Diagram I get a completely different output for RMS Spot Radius. Am I missing something here?   

 Hi everyone,Do you have an idea on why the sagittal and tangential MTF values are far by this much as shown below?Some details about the System: Off-axis mirror set, curved mirrors involved.Red arrow: sagittalYellow arrow: tangentialLooking forward    

How can I define a non-circular stop in Sequential Mode?  For instance, I would like to define my stop surface to be a rectangle.  When I apply a rectangular aperture to a surface and then check the box to make that surface the stop, it still creates a circular exit pupil.  I use the Float by Stop Size setting for the Aperture Type.

In NSC mode, if the exr, exi, eyr, eyi, ezr, ezi in the ZRD file could correspond to phase_at by  mathematical deduction？ When grating is included in the NSC mode，the “exr, exi, eyr, eyi, ezr, ezi” seem not able to be deduced corresponding to  “phase_at”.  If  the “exr, exi, eyr, eyi, ezr, ezi” is only related to accumulated phase due to propagation but not the phase introduced by objects that impart phase (i.e. gratings, etc.) as presented in the OSmanual?

 Hello All, I was trying to plot the MTF for 60 linepairs/mm for 100° and 50° in x and y field.I expect the MTF to be max in the center (close to 0° in both direction) and change radially (i think it would decrease), however, when I look at the results I am surprised to see the opposite.Am I missing something here? I tried to look at the help section but I cannot make sense of the results.Could someone please explain how the MTF is least in the center closer to the optical axis and gets better as the FOV increases?Looking forward to the answersAmit

I want to optimize my system for the best physical optics phase uniformity and in the same time to keep as many the original parameters of the system. Is there any operands in merit function editor that can help me to do this?

Dear all,Please somebody here, how to calculate the width of the Bessel beam in ZEMAX? 

I am trying to use the Flux v.s. Wavelength tool on Zemax to gather information for calculating a resolution of a lens involving a grism. When I run the program, the graph shows a straight line with a measurement of zero flux. I believe my program is having problem collecting the rays properly, however I have tested different ray databases and experimented with other options as well. Any ideas?(Will also take secondary advice on a possibly better way to gather data on resolutions)Thank you, New Zemax User

Dear all,     How to model a black-box optical system using Zernike coefficients – Knowledgebase (zemax.com)   tells us how to model a lens optical aberration using Zernike coefficients. However , this method can only define the aberration in one field at one wavelength, in most cases it’s not sufficent to define a lens overall aberration.  any further suggestions? (I’m working on the measurement of infinity corrected objectives with Shack-Hartmann sensor and i want to reconstruct the aberration in a simplified model.)

I frequently encounter a problem when optimizing with the optically fabricated hologram (OFH) surface where the local optimizer or hammer optimizer will not close. I have to stop the OpticStudio process in the task manager and reopen the file. The hammer optimizer seems to be much more prone to this problem.I will provide a toy file for examination shortly; however, I was wondering if this is a known bug or if there is a work around to prevent this behavior? I do call the HLGV operands and also the CMFV operands during optimization.

I have a layered coating that I made a coating file for. It is defined through material index vs wavelength and defining the layers, material, and thickness for each layer. Currently, I am using a tolerance analysis to see the effects of variation of the thickness and index of said coating, and am seeing nearly no sensitivity to changes in layer thickness or index, even with high orders of magnitude of change to thickness. This is not reflective of the real-world system data that currently exists.   Is there a good place to start in debugging this? I'm assuming ther has to be an error in the analysis somewhere.

Hi everyone,Normally, what percentile MTF you use for system tolerance analysis? I have a microscope system and want do tolerance analysis for alignment (optomechanics design). However, I am not sure how I choose MTF value. Should I use MTF value at 20% contrast, 50% contrast, or other value? Any information would be helpful!Thank you,Xiaolei

I am trying to use tolerance scripts to realistically model my lab’s compensation procedure. The system consists of several lenses mounted in two lens barrels that fit together. If the performance of the system is not compliant, then one of the barrels is rotated 90º with respect to the other and the performance is checked again; subsequently it can be rotated 180º or 270º as needed. I am thinking to model this by using multi-configuration for each of the barrel rotation options (0º, 90º, 180º, 270º), but as the system is nominally rotationally symmetric, this by itself will not do anything. I want to know how to apply the rotation AFTER the tolerance values (on lens wedge, tilt, shift, etc.) are selected for each Monte Carlo trial, so that I can rotate the directional tolerances for the lenses in the first barrel with respect to the tolerances for the lenses in the second barrel. For example, if a lens in barrel #1 has a tilt of 0.062º +X in a Monte Carlo trial, I want to compare this

Hi,I was reading Shawn Gay’s excellent article on the geometry used by the various curvature calculations. In it, Shawn writes:In the Surface Curvature analysis, the convention that OpticStudio adopts is to align the tangential direction with the x-direction at the surface vertex.This statement is true and of course the choice is arbitrary, but it seems to me this convention is 90 degrees at odds with where we use the term tangential elsewhere. The surface curvature data is independent of ray tracing, but when doing raytracing the convention OS uses is that tangential is along the y-axis.I must admit I assumed that this was the case in the curvature plots. I read the documentation, and it’s not described there. I searched for a KB article instead and found what I needed to correct my understanding. But since the convention is arbitrary, did we have to use a convention that is orthogonal to the convention used elsewhere?This is an old feature and I know that changing the convention will

My problem is that i had to format the laptop and when i try to put the license againt ir doesn’t work. I have written to academic@zemax.com but i don’t receive an answer. I hope someone can help me with that problem.

HiI want to check how should we limit the diameter-to-radius ratio in Zemax? I’m using MNCG and MXCG to limit the thickness of the lens. However, during the optimization process, the lens radius can be negative and the absolute value is larger than the lens thickness which make these lens not real. Could we use some operand to avoid the situation? I’m trying to find the operand to get the radius and limit the thickness according to the radius but failed to find the operand. Do we have other operand to do that?Thanks！

TOLR is an MF operand that returns statistical results for tolerancing sensitivity analysis, and adds these results to the optimization process. In the background, the tolerancing analysis with the compensation consideration is another optimization process under different perturbation conditions. Therefore, TOLR can also be used as an optimization operand for the parameters that require optimization beforehand. Concept of using TOLR This section discusses the use of TOLR, which is unrelated to tolerancing. Instead, it utilizes the optimization process behind what we see. To use TOLR, you need to use a tolerancing user script. This is because the merit function used in the previous optimization and the main optimization process are different. By using a tolerancing user script, you can control which merit criteria to use tolerancing user script defines how to compensate and optimize. The following commands are the ones we used: CLEARCOMP (remove variables), COMP (set variables), LOADMER