Hi David and Auriol,

Thanks for your information.

I am asking about are kind of complex objective, for instance, 58-371 (Edmunds optics). I couldn’t get any detailed information about it.

By the way I didn’t see the feature of design template on the  Zemax (version 20.1)

Thanks,

Ying

Hi David,

Do you know to what level we can make use of blackbox? It will be diffraction limited for modeling, and no aberrations, correct?

Thanks,

Ying

An OpticStudio BlackBox (ZBB) can reproduce almost any sequential analysis; the ZBB is essentially the entire Lens Data Editor in encrypted form (including radii, thicknesses, materials, coatings, and parameters) and when it’s loaded in memory, OpticStudio does not know the difference between a ZBB and “real” file.  It’s just encrypted to the user so you can’t see any of the details.  Therefore, except what is documented in the Help Files, a BlackBox is as good as the actual design.

There are a few areas where the ZBB will fail but these are not typical for a commercial OTS component:

• cannot run any tolerances (cannot add any coordinate breaks or change surface types)
• cannot run thermal analysis (individual surfaces are not exposed in the LDE so cannot change radii, thickness, material)
• cannot run stray light analysis (cannot convert to non-sequential mode)
• cannot produce zoom lenses (MCE is not supported for ZBB in general)
• cannot use ZPL solves (sometimes needed for complex designs/analysis)

Does anyone else know of other limitations of BlackBoxes?