I have an optical fiber and a lens for collimating. I have used some fields to represent the fiber output with given numerical aperture and  I want to optimize the final image which should not be not more than 17mm diameter. Is there any specific merit functions for this task and how to do it. 

My current project is to simulate output rays from a fiber bundle with 710 fibers (0.22 NA) arranged in 5.8mm core diameter as shown in the attached file. Which is the best way to design the source with specification mentioned above? In sequential or non-sequential mode and How? And my aim is to get all the rays focused or collimated to a detector with 17mm diameter.

Hello!Me and my professor are re-simulating a catadioptric capsule endoscope imaging system design created by Mr. Roy Wang and Prof. Qiyin Fang. The design has a separate file for forward and side view raytracing. The forward view looks as following:Forward view layoutAnd the side view as following:Side view layoutThe last four lenses are are shared with the forward and side views. My question is about the ray aiming option provided in Zemax. The figures above are obtained with the “Real” ray aiming option and “Float by Stop Size” aperture option. If the ray aiming is turned off, the simulation for the radial view does not even converge:

I got three different MTF distributions. Why they are different and how can we eliminate the difference? Which one shall I trust?For example, when I set the entrance pupil diameter to 1 for  \Zemax\Samples\Short course\Optical System Design Using OpticStudio\sc_dbga1.zmx I got this: 

How can I define diameter and divergence for a Gaussian point source in OpticStudio?

Question 1: Does OpticStudio account for coating thicknesses and alter focus accordingly?  Doesn’t seem like it. . . . This question applies to both sequential and non-sequential ray traces. Question 2: At cryogenic temperatures, a modeled cold filter coating doesn’t appear to shift waveband transmission accordingly.  Is there a way to get that to happen and, if so, what is it?

Hi, I have a simple question about the possibility of rotating all the elements of a non sequential system together.In particular, I would need to rotate all the detector elements by an angle of 40° around the y axis. (This would allow me to make a specific axis in my system coincide with the x axis to set polarization easily).Of course a solution would be to recreate the whole system, but it would be useful to find a command to rotate the whole sysem of a specified angle in case, for example, I would need a rotation of 50° instead of 40°.Thank you in advance. 

I am trying to model a checkered patterned coating with two different refractive indices on the single surface of the flat lens. At this point I am not aware of whether it can be done with zemax or not, can anyone help me in this regard?

Hello everyone,I am very new in Zemax. I am trying to model a simple imaging system for an AOD setup. As an input, I would like to have 2 beams with a defined aperture and angle to the optical axis originating form the center of the objective aperture.At the moment I am using the entrance pupil diameter to set the beam width and because I want to model laser beams I use a Gaussian Apodization as well. (I know this is probably not the best way to model a gaussian beam in Zemax but because I have to use some black box optical elements I can not use physical image propagation.)The optimization of the system works very nice so far and I get diffraction limited spots in the imaging plain.My problem is that every time I change something, for example the length of the system, the angled beam gets displaced and its origin is not the optical axis any more.I hope someone can help me with this very simple problem it is probably as easy as setting some option

Hi,By this question I am trying to understand how Zemax and in general how raytracing and geometrical optics work.As part of my learning ZOS-API, I am trying to raytrace as a function of hy (normalized field coordinates along y-axis) at px = py =0 for a lens with the specs belowOpticStudio can plot the ray coordinates as function of entrance aperture but here I am trying to plot the ray coordinates as function of field coordinates). When the px = py =0, so the aperture dependent terms will be zero and only the Distortion terms (nonlinear field-dependent terms) are present. However, raytracing with Zemax (I use ZOS-API) results a plot like this (x-axis is the 0 < hy < 1 and y-axis is the ray coordinates.

Hello Zemax Community,I have a question about the Luminance (angle space) setting in the detector viewer of OpticStudio’s NSC.When I tried to collect the luminance information from a source after interacting with an optical element, the luminance is higher than the source.I made a simple setup and attached it.In the file, I have a 10mm by 10mm square source with 1lm of power with a Lambertian distribution.A 100mm by 100mm rectangular detector is placed in front of the source.The luminance reads about 32 lumens/m^2/steradian.When I place a paraxial lens in front of the source and ran the ray trace, the luminance goes to 105 lumens/m^2/steradian.From my understanding, luminance should remain constant.I am not sure what I have done wrong. My goal is to read the luminance of an optical setup at a distance away.How do you create a detector that reads luminance from far away in NSC?Best,Ian

Does anyone out there have some examples of TAPR coatings that represent what really happens in a coating chamber?    Right now, seems a bit like a guessing game coming up with cosine, radial and polynomial factors that are representative of reality.Thanks!

I want to optimise a design with a birefringent wedge. At least one of the surfaces ( input or output ) is tilted, this tilt changes dependent on an optimisation but I want keep the optical axis at 45 degrees to the z axis. Am not sure a ZPL Solve is working correctly ( might be my code!? ) - is this the correct way to control the optical axis during an optimisation? Else, any pointers welcomed

I have a equilateral prism which I want to use in my setup. The prism is off the shelf. I got its zemax file (PS852-Zemax.zar) from Thorlabs and it is defined as non sequential object with a source diode and rectangular  volume. I inserted that prism in my setup by using only the rectangular volume NSC data from the provided zemax file.  I figured that I would need to tilt the prism to make the rays parallel to the bottom face. However when I tilt the prism, the rest of the sequential optics do not get tilted. For example look at the orange highlighted surface after the prism. I have shown the local axis of all the surfaces as well. I am unable to insert a coordinate break in the line right after the NSC in lens data editor in order to tilt rest of the optics. Any idea on how to tilt the optical axis after Non sequential

Hi !I tryed to calculate the fiber coupling with FICL and POPD and find it results very different.In POPD I used Gaussian Angle for 0.1 Sna and Rna FICL fibers aperture. For  0.1 Na Gaussian Angle I used 5.74 degree in POPD setting dialog for Beam definition and Fiber Data.In POPD I got fiber coupling 0.999In FICL fiber coupling is 0.74What data I can trust ?) 

Due to the evolving situation with Ukraine, Ansys (Zemax) made the decision in March to pause the distribution of technical assistance and software licenses to customers in Russia or Belarus. As a result of this decision, Community accounts of these users have also been banned. This ban was initiated as of April 15, 2022.A ban is not an account deletion, so users’ activity will be retained; however, it does prevent a user from logging in and posting on the forums. Bans are not permanent. This will be subject to ongoing review until such time that we can resume normal technical interactions in this region.We regret any immediate inconvenience arising from this, but hope you can understand the current constraints. If you have any questions in relation to this, please contact RussiaSupportUpdate@ansys.com.

Join us for our monthly “Ask an Engineer” event! Submit your questions between now and April 14th. The event will be hosted on ​​​​​this thread in text form with a focus on the spotlighted topic: Topic: OpticStudio-CAD interoperability and OpticsBuilderTo turn optical designs into reality, teams of optical and mechanical engineers need to coordinate their individual expertise around one common goal. In order to convert optical designs into CAD Zemax offers different approaches. I am happy to answer question about that in this month`s "Ask an Engineer" Event. Please ask your questions on Zemax OpticsBuilder, CAD Files Export tools, CAD Parts in Zemax OpticStudio and optomechanical workflows in general. Dates: March 30th - April 14thLive Discussion Time: 8am -

Hello,I’m having an issue where when using a grid sag surface in sequential mode, the analysis side (generating a wavefront map or optical path diagram) can be over 3 hours, which I know is not typical in sequential mode.I saw someone having a similar issue, and it was due to a formatting error in their .dat file (Troubles when using grid sags in OpticStudio | Zemax Community). I’ve double checked that my files have the correct formatting. I posted a reply there but figured this may be it’s own topic.This is a double pass system and I have Afocal image space checked in the system explorer. The system in the Zip has a R156 mm cylindrical surface as a  25x25 grid sag (Cyl25) and 250x250 (Cyl250), but I want to use this as launching point to do acylindrical surfaces (WolterP25).My impor

Hi,I encounter problems when using grid sags in my optical model. The software become really slow when I try to import a specified grid sag to modelize a mirror.The importation takes more than a minute, even with a small-sized sag file (64x64).Even after the sucessful importation, all modules I would use in the software are very slow to compute (shaded model, wavefront, surface sag,..), but I see that the sag is correctly taken into account when I wait for the corresponding mirror sag to be computed, meaning that the .dat file is correctly implemented.Does someone know the reason why the use of such a grid sag makes the software so slow? Have you got some tips that could help me to accelerate the data processing?I joined to this question an example of the 64x64 grid sag I mentionned above.Thank you for your answers.Pierre 

I would like to model a sequential standard surface with periodic air gaps or breaks as shown below. Is there an existing surface that can be modified to this effect?    

My name is Xiangli Jia and I'm a PhD student at UC Berkeley. I have a Zemax student license as part of the Zemax Academic program.Several weeks ago my laptop crashed and I had to reset it. Unfortunately, the reset uninstalled the Zemax on my computer and I'm not able to activate Zemax on this computer using the license activation code I have.I appreciate any help you can provide.

Hello,I am currently modeling a dynamic zoom system constituted of two liquid lens and a lens with a fixed focal length. The goal of this system is to change the size of the gaussian laser beam entering the zoom by a magnification factor in the range [0.2,0.6], so it can be flexible between each change of magnification. My problem is the following: I want to measure the magnification in order to be sure that the system can actually work for different magnifications. I had two ideas so far.The first one is to measure the magnification of the system using the operand PMAG inside the merit function. But it is valid only in the case of a paraxial system. Using a gaussian beam I am not sure that this is the best way to measure the correct magnification.My second thought was to measure the size of the gaussian beam waist at the entrance of the system, then at the exit and finally do the division (exit/entrance) inside the merit function. However I didn’t find s

One of my recent research projects requires Zemax to simulate a surface with a specific phase. I looked in the literature and found that Zemax has a "grid phase" feature in the surface selection that allows the user to customize the phase surface.I constructed a simple 5*5 grid according to the user manual and assigned the corresponding phase values to the grid points and saved them in a .dat file. I then imported the .dat file containing the phase values into the "grid phase" plane of Zemax and did not observe any deflection of the light in the 3D layout, but in the face-phase diagram I could observe that the "grid phase" plane did have The corresponding phase distribution is observed in the face-phase diagram.My question is: Is it really possible to attach a given phase shift to a given incident ray with the "grid phase" function in Zemax? If I want to attach a converging phase similar to a thin lens:

NSC Herriott Cell (Multipass, resonant cell) SimulationHello,I’m trying to simulate a stable Herriott Cell and am having some difficulties.Requirements of Cell:Mirror spacing: 375mmConcave mirror radius: 750mmOther mirror is flatBoth mirror diameters: 50mmQuad flat mirror: has a quadrant that is a 50/50 mirror that lets the incoming and outgoing beam come in and out of the cell. Ideally, incoming and outgoing beams should produce an interference pattern.Figure above shows how the beams reflect between the mirrors. The image below is the current simulation I have running. There is a hole in the center of the first mirror, so that the beam can enter and exit. However, in the experimental setup, there is a mirror with a quadrant that acts as a 50/50 mirror so the beam can enter and exit in

Hi I recently downloaded OpticsStudio on my Windows bootcamp but I almost always get a pop-up window before opening OpticsStudio saying 'Key is not working properly' and it then doesn't allow me to open the program. I've correctly installed everyhting and even managed to open OpticStudio twice without isssues but for some reason this problem with the key keeps reoccuring.  It's extremly frustrating as it completely delays my course projects.  Really hope someone can help me out. Best, Emir