Hello, I'm doing a thermal analysis to an optical system. The goal is to test different lens holders and housing materials, like aluminum, titanium, etc, and check the behavior of these holders on temperature variation.   Is is it possible, inside Zemax, to simulate metal materials (and do this thermal analysis) without using any external CAD file?   Feel free to ask in case you need more details of if I wasn´t clear enough. Thank you.   Narciso

Hi, When I sign off from the Zemax site I get the error shown below. Any idea why? Andrew Herbert  

I am non-sequential ray tracing a system with a lenslet array to simulate a SH-wavefront sensor and when I get the detector irradiance image it has two copies of the irradiance distribution.  One that is the one expected and a second that is reflected about the center of the detector.  This second one is not correct.  The 3D layout image has the correct single set of rays in it.  Is there some assumed symmetry operation for the detector view that I need to turn off?

The lens data for this is not available in the files. Is it possible to know more about how to edit the information in the files to modify it for our own purposes?  https://support.zemax.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500005575082-OpticStudio-models-of-the-human-eye 

The surfaces and rays are not generating for the example data and I went through the article. Not sure what to fix.    Please advise 

In the Manual and Help File, the Extended Polynomial function is given, but it would be helpful to have the table of which order corresponds to the value needed to fill all terms of a given radial order (similar to the table for the Zernikes). This would provide a quick reference for the Maximum Term Number to enter.

Anyone else getting this error message when trying to restore a file from archive (*.ZAR)?  'One or more errors occurred.'  I've attached a ZAR file that I'm having issues with (this isn't the only one) that was created from the Zemax sample doublet.  I submitted a help request a couple of weeks ago but haven't heard back yet. Thanks. Pat..

During my using OpticStudio, sometimes the exact same imaging system gets different plots in sequential and non-sequential mode. What's the difference between the 'image surface' of sequential and the 'detector' of non-sequential?  And how can I get information about the imaging quality?(In sequential mode there are all kinds of tools such as Rays ＆ Spots, PSF in the image quality group. But in non-sequential mode there are only Trace Rays and Detector ＆ Analysis group. ) For example, how can I get the PSF information using detector? 

In sequential mode, the object to be imaged is an ideal point object(infinitely small point) on the 'OBJECT surface' , and we know that we could use point object to analyze the imaging quality of the imaging system we build with some analyzing tools. But now I need an object with a cross-section of Gaussian beam but not idea point objects. To illustrate my aim and the reason why I need an object with a cross-section of Gaussian beam, the virtual procedure is as follow: First I focus a collimated laser beam with a laser focusing lens on the sample(i.e. OBJECT surface), so there is a non-ideal spot with a Gaussian distribution. Then I need to image the non-ideal spot through a infinity-corrected imaging system on the CCD(i.e. IMAGE surface) and calculate the size of the magnified spot on the CCD. this picture could explain the procedure: I know this procedure can be simulated directly in the non-sequential mode, but I'm not very good at the non-sequential mode.

When I install ZOS20.3.1_2020-10-12.exe, the design templates in the library were not installed. Could someone tell me how do I include this in the isntallation? Thanks!

In the glass catalog, what do the values labelled by FR and SR represent?

Hi everyone, Can you guys help me. Firstly, my plan is to make two optical system. The first system used gaussian as the beam source and I put wavefront aberration surface to disturb the beam condition. As the result, we can see the changed of the beam center of gravity, beam diameter and others at the image. So, my plan is to take the image result of beam diameter and others beam conditions into the second optical system, which means I want to use the beam condition that I received at the image of the first optical system as the initial beam at the second optical system. Can someone show the step on how to do it?     Maybe there is something that I did not realized or maybe I don’t have the right knowledge about it. I would love to know and learn. Thank you.

Hello there, When you design the optical layout, you arrive at the last stage where you make sure that all wavelengths are fully accommodated on the detector. Now, some important parameters of the detector include: number of pixels, pixel size (pitch), and detector's dimensions. At the IMAGE surface, How would you insert all of these parameters so that you are confident about the system's outcomes? My basic understanding is that the number of pixels & pixe pitch (size) are simulated indirectly (still figuering out how). But, how would you simulate the detector's dimensions so that you make sure your spectral range falls within the detector area? My suggestion for the Zemax developers is that they enable an interface where these detector paramerters are inserted and accounted for.   I would appreacite some insigts about the detector's parameters in Zemax. Cheers, Naif

When I click any surface in Lens data edition or click any line in MTF, Opticstudio open the option automatically. It is really inconvinent. Is there any method to remove this function?   

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 wo

Hi Team Zemax,   I am trying to simulate a sensor inside a room of a defined size. Now I am not sure about it's walls. How should I configure the parameters of the scattering model/function of the wall objects, in order to get an estimate of the received light with accuracy?  Nor do I have a reference for it.   Thanks in advance! Avijit

Dear all, I am a beginner of zpl and I want to make names of files with the 'for' loop. For example,    file1.txt    file2.txt    file3.txt    ...    fileN.txt Can I add a number to a string? What shall I do to make "filename" + number(integer)  + ".txt" ? Is there any smart method to do this?   Thanks in advance

Hi all,   As a part of collimating system i used mirror to fold the rays. I got a tilted image but I do not found the reason for that. Maybe something in coordinate breaks?     Thanks, Nadav  

Hi everyone, I am working on a NSC system, and I would like to define a Cylinder 2 Pipe with both sides at 45 degrees and absorbing surfaces apart from a single mirror surface, on the backside. However, I noticed that in Coat/Scatter section of the Object Properties window I cannot select the face. Is there another possible way to define the properties of the various faces? If not, what is the best alternative? Which objects support the Coat/Scatter settings? In my case, given that the object is thin, I can also use a rotated Elliptical volume, which however is not exactly what I need: the cylinder with this setup has to be right, and I want an oblique one. Thanks in advance, Michele

Hi everyone, Can you guys help me. I had made a simple optical system to study whether we can correct the beam profile or not. So, in my system, I had imported 2 types of same wavefront aberration which are in diffract order ‘1’ and ‘-1’ (I made the size of wavefront referring to the beam size before entering the wavefront surface). So, in my opinion, I can correct the beam profile so that the beam profile can goes back as before entering the wavefront aberration. But, in my system, the beam profile(beam size or irradiance) did not change as what I  expected. I attached my system in the file below. Can anyone help me by looking at my system and recognize me what is wrong and what should I do to get the expected result. Maybe there is something that I did not realized or maybe I don’t have the right knowledge about it. I would love to know and learn. Thank you.

Hi Team Zemax,   I wish to simulate a grating on curved surfaces i.e different pitches (period) in different zones on the curved surface. Can anybody help me to simulate such a grating. I hope I was approaching rightly by choosing an elliptical grating surface in SEQ mode that I could barely correlate it with what I am looking for.    Thanks in advance, -Avijit 

Hi there, I am trying to model a Fiber Interferometer in Non-Sequential mode and wanting to see an interference pattern with the effect of multiple reflections.  I have a diode source which has 3mW Power. In the source, Random Polarization box is checked. I have a cylinder and end the of the cylinder is coated. After the coating, I have a Mirror Detector Rectangle and I am trying to read the Coherent Power. By the way,  the 'Normalize Coherent Power' box is not checked in the detector because I want to see an interference pattern with the effect of multiple reflections between coating and mirror detector. I read the Total Power of the laser as 2 mW. There is no problem here because I am using coatings at the end of the fiber and Polarization Flag of the detector is 0 for now. But, when I try to read the power of laser with Polarization Flag is 1, I read the Total Power of Laser around 10^(-6) mW. The power is also the same with Polarization Flag 2. The reason I chan

Dear All, I have a slite image file that represent a 20microns slit width and I would like to increase it to 25microns. The 20microns slit file is here: 10 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 1111111111 1111111111 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 When I open the Geometric Image Analysis tab, the Field Size is 0.1mm to manifest each line (10microns). The rows with the ones represent 20microns which is my slit width. Now, how can I make 25microns? I know it is a matter of scaling but I seems not to be able to figure it out and thus I would appreacite your hints. The reason for this is that I want to test my slit image on the detector and make sure that the slit image is sampled by at least 3 pixels on the detector (FWHM = 3 pixels).   Thank you Naif

Dear All at Zemax community, I have found that the old forum of Zamax contains many great discussion that are absolutely helpful for beginners like me and unfortunately it is not accessible. That heritage of info, discussion and threads have not been migrated to this new forum and I do not know why! Now, beginners will have an extremely difficult time learning because they might ask some basic questions here and might not get answers! Is there any glimpse hope/way of getting access to that old forum?

Has anybody else noticed that it takes a long time for a 3D Layout (sequential or NSC) or Shaded Model to update and highlight a selected surface or object in orange? I've been noticing this in several recent releases of OpticStudio, including the latest (20.2.2 Professional, Perpetual license, not subscription).  It is having an impact on my editing wondering whether what I am doing is taking effect. Older versions seemed to very quickly/immediately highlight the selected surface or object in layout windows as soon as editing began on a different line in the Sequential Lens Data Editor or Non-Sequential Components Editor.  Now sometimes it is reasonably quick (10 seconds.  And I have a fast i7 gaming computer with super graphics. (not used by OpticStudio?) I've tried changing default 'Update: Editors Only' to all the other choices, and even unchecking and checking 'Fast Ray Trace (Slow Update)' in all of my NSC Object Properties (there were just a few) in a Non-