Hello,

Thanks for your post here on the Community forums!

The error you are getting is telling you that critical rays are missing a surface. This means that the real raytrace is unable to be performed and your merit function cannot calculate correctly. You can see more specifically which rays are missing and giving you the errors in the System Check tool under the Setup tab. An error in the raytrace means the system is not “stable” and therefore invalid until those errors are resolved.

A possible way to fix this would be to set the vignetting factors in the Field Data Editor (FDE) by clicking the Set All Vignetting button in the FDE toolbar. This will set compression factors to the ray bundle tracing through your system such that the marginal rays are no longer clipped by any surface apertures and the merit function can calculate again. Looking at the System Check tool again, there should no longer be errors in the system. More information about using vignetting factors can be found here:

How to use vignetting factors – Knowledgebase (zemax.com)

I hope this helps, but if you have any further questions, please let us know and we will be happy to help!

Best,
Csilla

TLDR for How to use vignetting factors – Knowledgebase (zemax.com) :

System Explorer > Fields > Settings > Set Vignetting

Should eliminate the error.

Thank you for your help Barton.Plimmer,

Would there be some trade-offs while setting vignetting?