Hi Baekcheon and Önder,

The Black Box model is not supported in Non-Sequential Mode. If you need to use Black Box lenses from different manufacturers, then the analysis you perform with it will need to be in Sequential Mode. Are there analyses you’d be able to perform in Sequential Mode for analyzing your lidar system?

If you need to move to non-sequential, I think the best approach you’d be able to take requires defining a Paraxial Lens in your Non-Sequential system, sized to be the same as the Entrance Pupil of the Black Box lens, for your transmit and receive optics. You’d basically need to approximate the optics in this way, since we cannot use Black Box data in NS mode.

On a final note, the SPEOS software, another Ansys product, operates in a non-sequential ray tracing mode, and it has a lidar plugin to generate results much in the same way. It takes in first order optical data (i.e., focal length and entrance pupil size), but can include other data like distortion of your receiving system through a text file (with extension .OPTDistortion). Here is a brief demonstration video: ANSYS SPEOS: LiDAR Distortion through a Lens - YouTube. If you are interested in learning more about this functionality, let us know, and we can put you in touch with the right folks. Thanks!