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Optimization of a property dependent on a material in non sequential mode

  • 17 August 2021
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Good evening.

I’m investigating whether it would be possible to optimize the optical axis direction of a birefringent material which forms part of a non sequential geometry object. Does anybody know if there is some way to indicate these fields as optimization variables? May be using the ZOSApi if it is not directly accessible through the graphical user interface?

I’ve seen that material optimization is not supported in NS mode but maybe the optical axis direction can be optimized, since I’m not changing the material through the optimization, but a continuous property of always the same material

Thank you very much

Regards

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Best answer by Mark.Nicholson 17 August 2021, 17:51

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Hi Javier,

That’s an interesting thought. One way to make the crystal axis orientation vector variable is to use the multi-configuration editor, with just a single config (or as many as you need, but I’m assuming the design isn’t already MC)

Use the operand NPRO (non-sequential properties) and data items 503-505 - Birefringent crystal axis orientation x, y, and z.

The trick will be to realize that the three orientation values are normalized internally so that the overall orientation vector has a magnitude of one. For this reason, I would not optimize all three. Optimize only two, or one maybe, and see what happens. The optimizer expects variables to be independent, but these three are linked together. I’d start with optimizing AX and AY and see what happens. Please report back and let me know how well this works, I’ve never done it before so this is just my best guess.

  • Mark

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