Skip to main content

Hi,



I am new to this community, had been using Zemax for some years but not considered as an expert. Would like to know how are experience designers out there managing complex design? All suggestions are welcome!



I am primarily using non sequential mode and often ends up my having hundreds of lines in my editor. Surely I suppose for complex projects, certain modules are separately designed standalone and that is where integration work happens and these modules are being brought together to assess the overall design. I often use single source ray to identify the exact paths my rays will travel for simplicity and not to clutter up the display. I will create the limits e.g each field point each field angles and this will amount up to >20 lines in the editor. A simple OAP converted to NSC from Seq will create 5 lines. To 'declutter' and to prevent me from unknowingly change my 'modules' (e.g overlooked some lines and changed it to global reference etc, I would convert it to a CAD itself, but this I guess will is at the cost of processing, as more CAD tends to lag up the file. Certaintly I like the way where in mixed mode, non sequential items are 'modularized', where it just appear as a single line and it can be separately edited, but i don't think there are such features yet. I am using v18.9 and I am aware that there is this new feature called 'Express View' where one can bookmark the lines and it will just show those lines. All these have not consider the 'null objects' which I will also include to comment to help me identify the 'modules' in my design!



Hope to hear and learn from the veterans here!

Hi Ying,



Thanks for your discussion here!



I can think of some suggestions that could help you to tidy up your system. Regarding the sources, you may use the Array Setting instead of adding one line per each source. This feature creates an array of identical sources, all with the same properties as the “parent” source.





The Setup Tab > Editors Group (Setup Tab) > Non-sequential Component Editor > Object Properties (non-sequential component editor) > Sources



You can define how many random rays to launch from the source when creating layout plots with the # Layout Rays parameter. This parameter is common to all source objects and is different than the number of rays used when performing analysis. 



Bookmarks can also be added in the Normal View (right-click one of the rows in the editor, and select “Edit bookmark”), and the Go to Object tool (in the NSCE toolbar) used to find and jump to a specific operand type, number, or bookmark. Right click on one of the rows will also offer the possibility of hidding it.



There is also a forum thread to share some tips & tricks for efficiently using OpticStudio, so feel free to have a look and post your ideas here



Looking forward to hearing from OpticStudio users!



 

Hi Ying,



As you point out, there are some systems that can be naturally divided. An example is a projection system where there is an illuminator design and an imaging design which makes use of the illumination provided by the illuminator subsystem. In that case, you can save the rays on a detector placed at the location in the system where the light body is used, often just before the slide representing the object. In the imaging system, this ray file can be used as a Source File placed in the same location. This eliminates the entire illumination system from the design of the imaging system. The two subsystems can each be designed separately.



For the case you mention, in which many Source Ray instances are used to generate a regular ray pattern, I also use that method and disliked the work and clutter of having many sources to create and maintain. I wrote two source DLL's for the purpose: one for a ray fan and one for a ring. I posted these earlier it the tips and tricks thread mentioned by Berta.



They can be found here:



https://my.zemax.com/en-US/forum/threads/e87c746d-1808-eb11-a813-000d3a36886f#7aadd36f-1808-eb11-b5d9-00155de924c0



Kind regards,



David



 

I agree with Berta, you can hide rows and use Bookmarks to document what has been done:



 





That said, I'd love to see the Editors in OpticStudio expanded to allow grouping so rows can be collapsed into a single + icon that when clicked, reveals all the collapsed data. Think of a merit function with all the boundary conditions collapsed, and all the default merit function operands collapsed:



+ thickness boundaries


+ image quality



And you click on the + by image quality to reveal



+ RMS Spot Wavelength 1


+ RMS Spot Wavelength 2


+ RMS Spot Wavelength 3



etc. Clicking on the wavelength 2 entry for example would give



+ RMS Spot Wavelength 1


    +Field 1 operands


    +Field 2 operands


    +Field 3 operands


+ RMS Spot Wavelength 3



and so on. This would make the editors much more usable when the number of rows gets large.



Just my 2c :-)



- Mark 



 

I like Mark's idea!



in fact, I really like his idea.



For the merit function, it would be great if the %Contribution column of the collapsed group would display the total for the group. That way if any invisible operand was dominating the merit function it would be noticeable. 

Me too! I'll pass your comments to our development team. It will definitely help to handle large editors :)

Reply


Community Posting GuidelinesCookie settings


Zemax Community

Need more help?

To Chinese users:

Do not provide any information or data that is restricted by applicable law, including by the People’s Republic of China’s Cybersecurity and Data Security Laws ( e.g., Important Data, National Core Data, etc.).


不要提供任何受适用法律，包括中华人民共和国的网络安全和数据安全法限制的信息或数据（如重要数据、国家核心数据等）。



Privacy policy   License Agreements    Terms of use    Cookie Policy   Zemax Account Licensing Policies