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3085 Topics
J
John DoeMonochrome
asked in Got a question?
Differences Zemax - Code V refractive index vs temperature?

Hi all,Does any one know why calculation of the refractive index vs the temperature is different between the two softwares?I’m not asking for glasses that have different parameters, (the reason is obvious) but for glasses which have same parameters and ways of calculation. Results are the same across the spectrum but not when the temperature changes.You can try almost any Schott glasses as parameters are given by the vendor for both softwares.It’s a bit frustrating. 😀

42613
mocquin
Ultraviolet
Mike.Jones
En-Lightened
Mike.JonesEn-Lightened
asked in Got a question?
What is going on in NSC Shaded Model?

Version 24.1 NSC Shaded Model hangs up big time, especially after I minimize it then restore it.  No response at all to mouse or keyboard.  I have to kill it and restart it.When will this bug be fixed?  This is a BUG, not a feature.  Please repair in an interim release.Mike 

46410
Jason.Lane
Julia
Zemax Staff
JuliaZemax Staff
posted in Got a question?
ZOS-API- How to access properties and methods in Lens Data Editor?

TheSystem.LDE.GetSurfaceAt(1). Radius; TheSystem.LDE.GetSurfaceAt(1). Thickness; TheSystem.LDE.GetSurfaceAt(1). SemiDiameter; TheSystem.LDE.GetSurfaceAt(1). ChipZone; TheSystem.LDE.GetSurfaceAt(1). Conic; TheSystem.LDE.GetSurfaceAt(1). TCE; TheSystem.LDE.GetSurfaceAt(1). Comment; TheSystem.LDE.GetSurfaceAt(1). Material; TheSystem.LDE.GetSurfaceAt(1). Coating; The above code can get and set values of Radius, Thickness, SemiDiameter, ChipZone, Conic, TCE; strings of Comment, Material, Coating. get_add_coating_tool=TheSystem.LDE.GetTool_AddCoatingsToAllSurfaces(); get_add_coating_tool.CoatingToAdd= 'None'; TheSystem.LDE.RunTool_AddCoatingsToAllSurfaces(get_add_coating_tool); get_add_coating_tool.CoatingToAdd= 'AR'; TheSystem.LDE.RunTool_AddCoatingsToAllSurfaces(get_add_coating_tool); In the above code: use tool Add Coating To All Surfaces to remove all coatings use tool Add Coating To All Surfaces to add ‘AR’ coating to all surface ​​​​Accessible tools include: RunTool_ConvertLoc

11091
O
jhimavanth
jhimavanthMonochrome
asked in Got a question?
45deg Tilted Dichroic Beam splitter in converging beam

Is Dichroic Beam splitter in a converging beam generates bad spot in transmitted beam? If so how to get a good one. For an imaging system how to handle the aberrations generated by BS at 45deg when it is placed between the sensor and optics mainly transmitted one?

1151
Mike.Jones
En-Lightened
Rasoul
RasoulMonochrome
asked in Got a question?
Designing a Tube Lens for a Microscope Objective

Hello everyone,I have already designed a microscope objective with the following characteristics:Working Distance: 200 mm Effective Focal Length: 40 mmNow, I need to design a simple tube lens with the following requirement:f_tube lens+f_objective​=Lwhere L is the distance between the two lenses.My goal is to align the front focal point of the objective with the back focal point of the tube lens at the aperture stop.Is there a solution to achieve this ?Thank you in advance.Rasoul

1581
C
Fully Spectral
R
Fully Spectral
RayFully Spectral
asked in Got a question?
How to see the status of old bug reports ? (from zemax website)

I wanted to check on some bugs I reported some time ago but, with the ANSYS merge and the freeze of the old bug database, I cannot see any bugs I reported on the new customer support page because the support is done by a third party.I can still access the old bug page but of course it’s outdated.I find it quite weird to ask us to create an account on the new support site for having this account left zero functionality. I don’t want to contact a third party just to check on the status of years old bug, it should be instant (it used to be)Can someone from here tell me simply if these bugs are fixed in 2025 R1.01 ?56796: crash with right-click options in the Universal Plot submenus. This one was reported and confirmed in 2022 and I can still see it in 2024 R2.01. Circumstances for it to happen are unlikely, so not critical. 63728: FFT MTF for field 1 being wrong when “Show Diffraction Limit” is ticked. Reported and confirmed in 2023. This one I am most interested in having an update. I en

1252
Esteban
Zemax Staff
mocquin
Ultraviolet
mocquinUltraviolet
asked in Got a question?
Make non-sequential system thermal

I am wondering which specifications must be filled to make a non sequential setup thermal. Simply put I use a single incident (10°) on a rectangular volume with material with thermal data.Changing the temperature of the system in the explorer, even on a wide range of temperatures, does not make the ray refract at different angles, but the 3D view stays the same whatever the environement temperature. I tried to modify the thermal data of the glass to make it even more respondent to temperature change but still no change.Am I missing something ?  

200
mocquin
Ultraviolet
mocquin
Ultraviolet
mocquinUltraviolet
asked in Got a question?
Ray database and Use Polarisation in NSC 3D Shaded viewer

When using a ray database in the NSC Shaded model viewer, are the checkboxes for Use Polarization/Split NSC Rays and Scatter NSC Rays still relevant ?Because from what I understand those parameters are set when the rays are traced and saved to the ZRD file, so I’d expect those to be irrelevant later on   

210
mocquin
Ultraviolet
Sayak
SayakSingle Emitter
asked in Got a question?
Spot size measurement in sequential mode

Hi, I am relatively new in optics and OpticStudio. I am trying to simulate the spot size at certain distance from a lens while using a fibre as source. Spot size changes as we move the image plane further from the lens as expected. But I am not seeing it change as I move the image plane from 330mm to 600mm. Not sure why. Second question is when I do a quick fucus, it doesn’t bring the image plane in the focus. But when I set the Thickness cell to marginal ray height it does move the image plane to the right position. Any help will be highly appreciated. Thank you. 

690
Sayak
Guangxun
GuangxunSingle Emitter
asked in Got a question?
Non-sequential parts in sequential lens model issue

I am running a hybrid sequential simulation that consists of a lens system and a cover window in front of the lens. The cover window is modeled as a non-sequential object, and I have set up its parameters accordingly. To create the non-sequential object, I used an STP file. However, I noticed that a stand surface is always required for non-sequential objects within the sequential system. Unfortunately, this stand surface is positioned too far away, which prevents me from moving the cover window closer to the lens system. 

360
Guangxun
Michael Cheng
Zemax Staff
Michael ChengZemax Staff
posted in Got a question?
Angle definition in OpticStudio

There are a few different definitions for a direction in OpticStudio. It might be good to discuss them in one place.Note we won’t repeat the information that is already mentioned in Rotation Matrix and Tilt About X/Y/Z in OpticStudio – Knowledgebase. It’s suggested to also reference to this place. Unit vectorWe use (L,M,N) to represent the unit vector of a ray, which is, in other words, the direction cosines of the ray. Direction cosine space (L,M)This is simply the first two elements of the unit vector. It’s sufficient for describing a ray because N can always be restored by the rule L^2+M^2+N^2 = 1. Note in this space we don’t distinguish rays between -z and +z directions because the N is always positive. Spherical coordinate (θ, ϕ)This is the standard spherical coordinate, where we ignore the radial dimension as we only need to describe the angle. It’s not exactly used in any analysis in OpticStudio, but we can still find it somewhere. For example, the RAID is basically the absolute

6864
Michael Cheng
Zemax Staff
mocquin
Ultraviolet
mocquinUltraviolet
asked in Got a question?
CAD Navigation style

Most CAD software allow to customize the navigation style, meaning zooming/panning/rotating depending on mouse/keyboard button held/mouse scroll etcI believe this is not configurable in Zemax. For example:panning done by hodling mouse-wheel zooming by scrolling rotating by click-hold right-click immediatly opens the settings windowFor comparison, in many other CAD software, panning is done by holding right-click or MAJ+left-click-hold, etcCan you confirm this is not configurable in Zemax ?Would you consider improving the UI in futur versions of Zemax ?

230
mocquin
Ultraviolet
shkang
shkangSingle Emitter
asked in Got a question?
Minimum Modelable Thickness in Zemax: Can Nanometer-Scale Thickness Be Simulated?

1."What is the minimum thickness that can be modeled in Zemax? Is it possible to model thickness in the nanometer (nm) range?2.In Zemax Non-Sequential Mode, I am trying to analyze the efficiency of light reaching a sensor. The setup includes a flat plane with thicknesses of 400nm and 1.97μm, a sensor size of 18μm × 24.7μm, and a light source with a 120° emission angle. However, I am encountering a 'Geometric Error' during ray tracing. What could be causing this error, and how can I resolve it?

260
shkang
rkarra7
rkarra7Monochrome
asked in Got a question?
Inserting Sequential Lens for Analysis Into Non-Sequential System

I have some lens files that I am trying to put into a Non-Sequential system for analysis, but I am struggling to find the right way to do it. I tried 2 approaches: I tried creating a NSC object out of the sequential lens, but I am struggling to put it into my non-sequential system. Copying and pasting the cells doesn’t seem to work, and I don’t want to rebuild my whole NSC system around it.  I also tried creating a lens catalog out of it, but every time I do that, I can an error that says “Entrance pupil cannot be located at object. Check object thickness and stop location”I have only used non-sequential before so any assistance/explanation of the 2nd point would be helpful. I would also like to know whether the 2nd method is an acceptable way of conducting an analysis (specifically, I am looking to do some self-mixing analysis). On the 1st point, I’m confused if I am missing something simple to put this newly created component in my non-sequential system. I have attached the lens file

812
rkarra7
Jmilberger
JmilbergerMonochrome
asked in Got a question?
REAX Operand Vs. Footprint Diagram

I have a system that I’m controlling the beam size on using the REAX and REAY.  I’ve got it optimized to a spot I’m happy with but when looking at the footprint diagram results they show a different beam size.  What is the difference between these two? REAX showing -22.5 while the footprint diagram shows 17.7  

2773
Jeff.Wilde
Luminary
CJ27
CJ27Visible
asked in Got a question?
Back focal plane objective design

Hi there Zemax community,  I am coming here now in search of your expertise and help with a design problem that I am having. I have the following optical system which consists of a “quasi” solid immersion lens (Weierstrass lens) in combination with a singlet that generates a collimated output. Here I am just interested in the on-axis point so while optimizing this system, I just considered spherical aberrations and the overall angular deviations for the output wavefront in the afocal mode: As you might guess from the title, I want to use image the back focal plane of this system. For me the question here is: Where is the back focal plane of this “objective”?  I found this arxiv paper in where they make an analysis of different commercial objectives used for doing back focal plane imaging:https://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.04037 From figure 4 in the paper I can think that if I want to find the back focal plane, I need to change the source from being a point to plane waves coming from the object

1231
CJ27
yfei
yfeiMonochrome
asked in Got a question?
Scatter Rays in NSC

I have been trying to design in NSC with scatter tissue. I followed the rectangular volume method to generate a volume contains the source point. My question is what are the difference between Volume Physics, Coat/Scatter in component editor; Scatter NSC Rays in NSC 3D layout; and Scat? for NSTR in NSC merit function. My understanding is the Scatter NSC Rays are only for show in 3D layout, and NSTR will consider the volume physics I set in component editor. Is this correct? If I don’t input any model in volume physics and turn on Scat? in merit function, how would the calculation be done? Thank you for the help! 

992
yfei
sjhart
sjhartMonochrome
asked in Got a question?
unhide row or column (but not unhide all)

Is there any way to unhide a single row (or column) in the NCE? Unhide All is too much. If the GUI itself doesn’t allow this, is there a way to do it in a ZPL or using ZOS-API?

522
sjhart
ztystar
ztystarInfrared
asked in Got a question?
How to plot Diffraction Efficiency vs. Polarization for volume hologram in Zemax?

Hi all, I have a question about simulating hologram diffraction efficiency (DE) in Zemax. In the sequential mode, it has the built-in function to plot DE vs. Angle and DE vs. Wavelength, this actually tells us when the angle or wavelength is deviated from hologram construction condition, how the DE will response correspondingly.My question is in Zemax, are we able to plot DE vs. Polarization as well? For example, we use P-polarized light to record hologram, and could we plot how the DE changes when the playback beam has different polarization state? Any insights are appreciated! Thank you!  

270
ztystar
Julia.Triche
Julia.TricheSingle Emitter
asked in Got a question?
(NSC) Can you set the power threshold on which split rays to draw?

UPDATE: as soon as I posted this question, the answer finally popped up in a suggested related topic. I guess I didn’t look as hard as I thought. For others curious, this is an option in the system explorer under Non-Sequential. Possibly, I am simply using one of these features incorrectly. What I would like to do is to edit the threshold at which split rays are either drawn or not in the shaded and 3d models. I am working on a relatively complex system and adding custom coating table entries, but having rays drawn when a coating passes only 3% in a given band can be helpful at some points and frustrating at others.Is there a setting I am missing to control this? I would ideally enter a power level at which rays are no longer traced and tune it depending on if I’m looking at back surface reflections/stray light (lower threshold), or just the nominal system performance (higher threshold).Thanks!

170
Julia.Triche
Monica93
Monica93Infrared
asked in Got a question?
CRVT operand: different values in multi-configuration editor and lens data editor

Dear community,I have a question about the CRVT operand. First a bit of background:I have a simple system: an optical fiber in front of a collimating lens:Fig.1 :Optical fiber in front of collimating lensI am trying to do a thermal analysis. When the min and max temperature are added under (Sytem → Make thermal), the multi-configuration editor opens and a whole list of operands are shown. One of them is CVRT: Fig.2: Snapshot multi-configuration editor. Line 11 shows CVRT value for surface 3, for the different configurations (columns). Column 2 is the default configuration of T = 20 degrees celsius. I noticed that it is not the same value as what I see for surface 3 in the lens data editor: Fig. 3: Here, for surface 3, the curvature value is -6.82901 for the current active configuration. Whereas in the multi-configuration CRVT is -0.14643 (line 11, see figure 2) When I check the definition of CRVT I read: “If the multi-configuration operand is a CRVT, then the curvature of that surface

9247
Liang Chang
Rasoul
RasoulMonochrome
asked in Got a question?
How to Fix Working Distance in Optimization for Objective Design?

Hello everyone,I am new to optical design and currently working on designing a simple objective using two achromatic lenses. The objective should have:Effective focal length (EFL): 40 mm Working distance (WD): 200 mm Magnification: 5X (using a 200 mm tube lens)I am trying to ensure that the working distance remains fixed during optimization. My question is:How can I constrain the working distance in the optimization process? Is there a specific operand in Zemax (or another software) that I should use to maintain the WD?My ultimate goal is to design a confocal microscope with this working distance requirement.I would appreciate any guidance or suggestions!Thanks in advance,Rasoul

1542
Rasoul
Berke
BerkeSingle Emitter
asked in Got a question?
Optimizing Computational Efficiency in the Design of Continuous Zoom, Multi-Wavelength Optical Systems

Hello,When designing a continuous zoom, multi-wavelength system, I encounter a significant computational power challenge. To address this issue, I convert clear semi-diameters rather than their maximum values to automatic semi-diameters (optimizing for maximum diameter increases the optimization time by 2-3 times). Then comes the tricky part: I lack information on each surface's maximum diameter. In some cases, such as wider angles, the diameter of the lenses decreases while they approach closer positions according to zoom settings. Converting these lenses to their maximum values leads to unrealistic positions for the mechanical structure.To overcome this hurdle, I consistently utilize DMLT or ETGT comments for 15-20 configuration systems. Interestingly, when optimizing the same system with other software, they automatically convert every diameter to its maximum without affecting computational power.Do you have a proper way to solve this problem? 

35911
dluo
Giles Sheppard
Giles SheppardSingle Emitter
asked in Got a question?
MTF tolerancing focus errors - Can I use RMS spot metric to refocus during MTF tolerancing?

New Zemax user, long time CodeV userI am attempting to do a tolerancing exercise on a lens, but some Monte Carlo results are not focusing correctly.  I suspect it is something to do with the default focus optimization for MTF tolerancing being wavefront optimization (which is bad at finding best focus even in the optimizer stand-alone when I open the worst Monte Carlo result and manually optimize).Is there a way to tell the refocus method within the tolerancing function to use RMS spot optimization?  Or does someone have other wisdom to offer?

785
Giles Sheppard
Nicola Nicassio
Nicola NicassioInfrared
asked in Got a question?
How to plot Intensity Transmission and Intensity Reflection

Hi, reading the user’s guide i saw different plots of the Intensity Transmission and Intensity Reflection as a function of the incidence angle and polarization. How can I visualize these kind of plots? I’m working in non sequential mode and have different volumes. I would visualize, for instance, the plots for the surface between volume 3 and volume 4. I thought it would be easy, but i’ve never read about how to plot these functions.Thank you in advance. 

171612
mocquin
Ultraviolet

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