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Ruonan.YangSingle Emitter

asked in Got a question?

Surface tilt after reversing the path

Hi everyone,I encountered one problem using the reverse lens command for a tilted surface. The surface is tilted around both X and Y. After applying the reversing button, the surface cannot be realigned along its original path. The path is in the first pic. The collimated light is reflected by a tilted surface and at the image side there’s a mirror. Then I copied the elements in the following path and applied the reverse function but the path is not the original one.

1 year ago

silence19910228

asked in Got a question?

How to model a Fresnel lens of equal thickness？

Dear：Hi，I want to model a Fresnel lens of equal thickness,but I do not know how. So I ask you this question. I want this lens to have a diameter of 264 mm，and the effl is 245 mm，with 5 rings.yours

1 year ago

AllieZemax Staff

published in User News & Alerts

November 2021 Community UpdatesNewsletter

WelcomeWelcome to the November monthly Community update. In this newsletter you will find:Featured Community posts: this month we’re focusing on DLLs, a powerful set of tools to customize a range of features in OpticStudio. A list of Knowledgebase articles which are new or have been significantly updated in the last month. Information on the new Aspheres and Freeforms learning plan on OpticsAcademy. Mini interview with our highlighted user Nicolas Azais: get to know Nicolas, an OpticStudio expert.Let us know in the comments below if you there’s anything you’d like in this newsletter in the future or if you have any other feedback. We want to make this monthly post as useful to you as possible! Featured Community postsThis month we’ve seen lots of questions about Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs), both on the Community and in questions to Zemax support, so we thought it we should pull out some of our favorite posts on this topic.DLLs are a really powerful way to extend and customize feature

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1 year ago

Kerry.HerbertZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

Tech Tip Tuesday: Setting up HUD systems

Setting up a Head-Up Display (HUD) system can seem quite challenging, with all the (highly) off-axis elements. Starting in sequential mode, OpticStudio offers several tools to make it easy for designers, to set up the position and orientation of each surface:Our Tilt & Decentre Tool has been recently updated! You can now tilt/decentre a surface using an arbitrary pivot point, to align with the actual pivot point of a mirror holder for instance: The Coordinate Break Return: OpticStudio will then calculate the parameters of that Coordinate Break surface so that after this coordinate break surface the local coordinates are identical to (“returned” to) the local coordinates of a previous sequential surface: The Chief Ray Solve: that Solve calculates tilts and decenters of a coordinate break surface so it’s perpendicular to and centered on the chief ray:Want to learn more? Join our upcoming webinar: Stray light analysis for HUD systems on November 18th, 2021 - http://ow.ly/75xR50GJtcoR

1 year ago

Jiwhan.NohSingle Emitter

asked in Got a question?

designed DOEs surface evaluation

Currently, I am doing simulation for DOEs (Diffractive optical elements) by using Binary2 surface and working on it. I also converted my surface phase (binary2 surface) to binary surface *.GDSII format (moreover *.bmp, *.dwg, *.dxf) for fabricating. However, we need to evaluate *.GDSII files ( or *.dwg, *.dxf, *.bmp), I plan to import these files into ZEMAX for their Wavefront evaluation.1. how can I import these files into ZEMAX (we already defined the fabrication file)2. Import the above files into ZEMAX for detailed evaluation, I know ZEMAX support for *.sat, *.STL, *.STEP,.... some kinds of CAD standard, but what I am concerned about is the resolution of the CAD file when imported into ZEMAX, is there any problem with this file?3. They can also be imported by DLL files, however, I have no experience with this kind of User-defined surface, can you please guide me on how to approach it, or a reference if available

1 year ago

Mark.NicholsonLuminary

posted in Got a question?

Faster Ray Tracing Speed in 21.3.2?

Hi,I just upgraded to 21.3.2 from 21.3.1 and was pleased to see that the Performance Test has gone up. Using the double Gauss sample file I getwhere previously I got 240-250 million RSS. I don’t know if this is a change to OS itself, or the fact that I’m now on Windows 11 and have got all the latest updates to .NET etc. However, it’s good to see things speeding up, wherever the improvement comes from!Mark

1 year ago

Hui ChenZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

OS tips & discussion - POP Pilot Beam Position Sign

In the POP analysis, we see the Pilot beam position being reported at the bottom of the window. This beam position can be either positive or negative depending on the position of the Pilot beam waist relative to current surface. The sign of this Pilot beam Position follows a simple rule. If the current surface is to the right of the Pilot beam waist location, the Position has a positive sign; if the current surface is to the left of the Pilot Waist, then it’s a negative sign. To confirm this, I placed the beam waist on surface 2 below. You can see in the POP text pane, the Pilot beam Position on surface 3 is reported as positive 20 mm, because surface 3 lies to the right of surface 2 which is the beam waist location. POP Pilot Beam PositionYou can find this description in the Help file at The Analyze Tab (sequential ui mode) > Laser and Fibers Group > Gaussian Beams > Paraxial Gaussian BeamPOP Beam Position help description

1 year ago

Hui ChenZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

OS tips & discussion – Operand to report spot size in X or Y direction separately

In OpticStudio Sequential mode, one can use the Spot Diagram to view the RMS spot radius. And you can use operand such as RSCE, RSCH, RSRE, and RSRH to report this radial RMS spot size into the Merit Function Editor for optimization. However, if your system provides a non-circular spot, you might want to know the spot size along the X or Y direction separately and might want to optimize the X or Y spot size individually. When you go to the Text tab of the Spot Diagram window, you can view the RMS spot size in X or Y direction, but the RSCE/RSRE operands only report the radial spot size and cannot report the size along the X or Y direction separately.One thing you can do is to create a ZPL macro to pull data from the Spot Diagram Text tab and then use the ZPLM operand to return these X/Y spot size into the Merit Function Editor for optimization. However, this takes some programming effort and also having the ZPLM operand in the MFE might slow down the optimization process.Another approa

1 year ago

Kerry.HerbertZemax Staff

published in People & Pointers

Tech Tip Tuesday: Modelling Illumination Systems

To model lighting systems, or non-imaging illumination systems, the design method that immediately comes to mind is non-sequential ray tracing. And OpticStudio can certainly prove quite efficient in this area! Yet, it can be wise to have a look at your global workflow here; and take advantage of OpticStudio sequential mode as well!Indeed, sequential mode being significantly quicker, you can use it to model, and optimize your optics very efficiently. You can include complex surfaces such as freeform, and still save time and efforts in the process.The following example illustrates the optimization of a LED pendant luminaire: An optimized workflow could then look like :Sketch out ideas Simple fan of rays, generate starting design using OpticStudio sequential mode Convert your system from sequential to non-sequential, inside OpticStudioAnd then in OpticStudio non-sequential mode :Check: Source Point Check: Source Rectangle Check: Source FileAnd, if needed: (re)Optimize either in sequentia

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1 year ago

AllieZemax Staff

published in User News & Alerts

AllieZemax Staff

published in People & Pointers

Happy holidays!

The days are shorter - in the Northern hemisphere, at least - and the out-of-office messages are many! With this time of year comes holiday wishes from A to Z (Ansys to Zemax, in case you were curious). Check them out below! Season’s greetings from Zemax! Santa + Simulation from Ansys

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1 year ago

AllieZemax Staff

published in User News & Alerts

See who's going to Photonics West 2022!Upcoming Event

Photonics West is just around the corner - are you going? Plenty of Zemax staff members are! See below for a list of technical team members who will be in attendance, along with some of their specializations. Come speak with us about optics, Zemax products, and your best restaurant recommendations in the area! Catch us as booth #1843 or schedule an appointment to chat here: Zemax at Photonics West 2022! @Steven.Lacava - Optical Solutions EngineerChat with me about Adaptive Optics, Satellite Tracking, CAD/FEA, and Fluid Dynamics. @Ty.Adair - Senior Optical Solutions EngineerChat with me about any of our products! @Allie - Optical EngineerChat with me about Zemax’s programming capabilities! @Angel Morales - Optical EngineerChat with me about optical applications for consumer electronics and communications! @David.Vega - Senior Application Development EngineerChat with me about optical or biomedical engineering, and optical manufacturing! @Esteban - Senior Product Manager, OpticStudi

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1 year ago

shenwuSingle Emitter

asked in Got a question?

No light rays of order 0 in Volume Hologram Waveguide

I build a wavegudie system based on volume hologram (hologram lens), the light rays of order 1 propogate in waveguide successfully, but there is no light rays of order 0. The system is attached below.

1 year ago

Kerry.HerbertZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

Tech Tip Tuesday: Automotive lighting curvature solver

Authored by: @Gernot.Blobel More and more precise camera and projection systems are required in automotive interior and exterior lighting. Headlamps for adaptive driving beams and projections onto the road need an accurate and sharp image. AR applications and the projection of warning notices require such a high quality that the field of view and the distance help with the accurate calculation.With Zemax OpticStudio you can accurately calculate automotive lighting systems, e.g. the projection lens for a headlamp. Starting the lens design and optimization in the sequential mode, the Field Data Editor will help you to define the field of view. Suppose you want a solution that automatically sets the radius of the object plane equal to the Petzval curvature. Of course, always start by checking that a solve isn’t already supported before writing a macro! The existing PETC macro solution (linked below) calculates the Petzval curvature of the system and returns the value to OpticStudio.In th

1 year ago

suhwanInfrared

asked in Got a question?

How to optimize for better lens performance?

I am in the process of optimizing to improve the performance of the lens.My design skills are very poor.My goal is to reduce the RMS radius of 1-10 fields of the lens to near the Airy Radius. And I want to make a lens with MTF (223 lp/mm) 1field:0.7 and 10.0 field:0.4 or better. But there is no further performance improvement.I am currently using the operands of EFFL, TOTR, RAID, RELI, and DIMX. Should I use more operands?What can I do to improve the performance of the lens? Or is the initial design of the lens wrong?I will attach my zemax file.

1 year ago

Steven.LacavaZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

Tech Tip Tuesday: Infrared Systems and Coatings

Thermal imagining consists of a pretty wide part of the spectrum containing three main groups with multiple sub-bands within each. So, what happens if we want a particular wavelength or want to filter all but a few select wavelengths, such as a specific sub-band of an IR-band? This is where coatings can help. Coatings in OpticStudio can be handled in a number of ways, off the shelf coatings can be used and called in the coat/scatter section under properties, encrypted coatings from vendors can be used allowing the optical simulation to be accurate while protecting the vendors formula of the coating. The Essential Macleod package can be used to design a coating and export a coating file that OpticStudio can read. Finally, my favorite method is to create your own coating as it offers the greatest control shown below, there are a few ways to do this and your custom coating can even be turned into an encrypted coating if you are working with outside contractors or joint venture projects wh

1 year ago

jbailygouldSingle Emitter

asked in Got a question?

How do I modulate one branch of a mach zehnder interferometer?

I’m building a laser doppler vibrometer as a senior project. To better understand how interference patterns work, I wanted to simulate this. In real life I will be using an electro optic modulator on one branch of the interferometer to heterodyne a carrier signal of around 80kHz. I would like to detect a doppler shift from vibrations around 5kHz. I loaded up the mach zehnder example file and would somehow like to run one path through what would be an 80 kHz modulation and then another 5 kHz to simulate the shift vibrations. I guess I’d like to try and see if a spectrum analyzer could pick this up and see the 5 kHz shift isolated. Or maybe view it in transient. The real life project has the recombined beam fed into a photodiode, then trans-impedance amplifier, then FM demodulator to read out only the doppler shift. Any insight on how to simulate a modulated beam / laser doppler vibrometer type system would be an amazing help! (FYI I have not used this program before so I am not familiar

1 year ago

ahanninenSingle Emitter

asked in Got a question?

Create Annular aperture for phase-contrast condenser?

Hi there, I am designing a phase-contrast microscope and would like to include an annular, ring-shaped aperture in the condenser lens for a phase-contrast microscope. Please advise and thank you in advance!

1 year ago

Andreas.BitzerStudent

asked in Got a question?

Airy Disk on Camera Obscura does not work

I was trying to model a simple camera obscura in sequential mode.I wanted to check the airy disk depending on the size of the pinhole. The pinhole was simply defined by the semi diameter of the stop surface.The simulation worked correct but I became a bit confused since the airy disk was not affected when I changed the distance between stop surface and image plane.The only distance which affected the size of the airy disk was the distance between object and image plane which doesn’t make sense.Thanks for your help!

1 year ago

Kerry.HerbertZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

Top Tip Tuesday: HUD

For the initial setup and performance evaluation of an HUD (head-up display) system there are two handy tools in Zemax OpticStudio: The Field Wizard will help you to set up the Field Data Editor with the most common requirements and to automatically create field patterns.The Full-Field Aberration analysis tool will give you quickly access to analyze the aberrations as a function of field position, e.g. of your windshield. It calculates the Zernike decomposition of the wavefront and displays the Zernike coefficients across the full field of view. This analysis can be particularly useful on systems containing freeform surfaces to verify aberration correction across the specified field. The further optical design of the HUD will start at correcting for the aberrations. Want to learn more? Join our upcoming webinar: Stray light analysis for HUD systems on November 18th, 2021 - http://ow.ly/75xR50GJtcoReference:Which-tools-to-use-when-working-on-a-Head-up-Displayhttp://ow.ly/Ob6m50GJtcn

1 year ago

Kai Xin.SohInfrared

asked in Got a question?

Which spectrum file to choose when Generating Radiant Source Model Rays

Hello! I have a quick question, I am trying to make use of some Radiant Source Models, I downloaded Philips Lumileds Lighting Compay: LXML-PB01 (Blue); 460-490 nm. However, when I was generating the rays, I was prompted to choose a spectrum file, I am unsure of which to select. Therefore, I selected Fluorescent CIE 15.2 F01.spcd. Is it suitable? Thank you for you help! Wishing you a pleasant day ahead!

1 year ago

Sandrine AuriolZemax Staff

posted in Got a question?

Issue when Zernike coefficients are calculated at the image plane (Reference OPD = Absolute 2)

I recently had this question on the support so I thought it was worth sharing. The following system contains a Zernike Fringe Phase Surface with one Zernike term Z9 = 1. This phase surface is after the STOP surface.If we calculate the Zernike Fringe Coefficients at the image plane (Reference OPD = Absolute 2), it gives:The coefficients have changed because the beam has propagated over 100mm. Now to compensate for these aberrations, we have defined a second configuration that contains another Zernike Fringe Phase Surface. That surface compensates the aberrations introduced by the 1st:But if we look at the wavefront map, it is not flat: And the reason for that is that the Zernike Fringe coefficients always consider that the beam is uniformly sampled and that is ONLY true at the STOP surface. In configuration 1, the STOP is at surface 1 and in configuration 3, the STOP is at surface 4 (image surface).Since Ray Aiming is used, the red dots (configuration 3) are uniformly sampled in the Fo

1 year ago

Steven.LacavaZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

Tech Tip Tuesday: HUD with FEA and the OpticStudio STAR Module

HUD or Head Up Displays are a form of AR/VR technology (Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality). This has been a disruptive technology from its inception. A technology that began in the aerospace and defense industry, has since permeated commercial aircraft, automotive, heavy construction equipment, consumer electronics and many more. As this technology reaches more real-world applications, we need to consider the impact environment has on the optical elements in these systems. When temperature and pressure change, the housing holding the optics change, placing external forces on those optics, plus the temperature and pressure can provide a direct source of deformation to the optical system. The OpticStudio STAR Module allows FEA data about structural and thermal changes to the optical elements to be imported to OpticStudio and then analyze the results using the same analytic tools used to design the system.The top tech tip this Tuesday, there is now a script for Ansys Workbench that faci

1 year ago

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