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CAD Camera views in OpticStudio?

  • 14 February 2022
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Does OpticStudio have some type of camera view similar to the CAD camera view in SolidWorks? Basically, if I have a non-sequential layout, can I place a camera somewhere in my layout and see what the camera would see?

 

 

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Best answer by Angel Morales 22 February 2022, 23:33

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Userlevel 7
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Hi Camillem,

 

I have a modest knowledge of Solidworks so check out other answers as well. There isn’t such an equivalent in OpticStudio as far as I can tell, whether it be sequential or non-sequential. In non-sequential, you can setup different kind of detectors, but they would be equivalent to a camera chip and would register rays that make it to its surface without necessarily forming an image. If you wanted the detector to form an image, you’d have to put some optics in front of it. And, it can be as simple as a paraxial lens. Also, you’d have to make sure that you have enough rays going to the detector and this might be tricky depending on the scene you want to image. That being said, there might be better things to do depending on what you’d like to achieve. Could you give us more details on your application, and what result you’d like to obtain?

Take care,

 

David

Userlevel 5
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Hi Camillem and David,

I agree with David’s statements here -- we do not have a “camera” feature in the way that it looks like CAD-oriented software has. You would likely need to put down a Paraxial Lens + Detector at the lens focus and visualize the scene that way, changing the field of view with your focal length. There would also be the issue of sampling, as you’d basically need to fill the scene with light and define reflection/scattering on the objects that will get light to the Paraxial Lens (perhaps you could leverage importance sampling here?).

We also have an article that simulates the sparkle of a diamond. It leverages the Ray Rotator object to act as a retroreflector surrounding a diamond object in NSC mode, and light can therefore take the path of Source → Diamond → Ray Rotator → Diamond → Detector. It’s explained a bit more elegantly in the article, and I think in this case, you would be defining the “field of view” with something like the detector size. This is a bit more setup I think, and the general implementation for something other than a single object might require more thought, but perhaps it’d give you what you’d like.

Thanks, and let us know if you have any more questions!

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