Hi Giulia,

It might be more intuitive to model the prism in non-sequential, but it might restrict you in the kind of analysis you can use in non-sequential mode. Altough, one can argue you could convert your non-sequential file to a mixed-mode file (hybrid of sequential and non-sequential). The mode that is going to be better suited is dictated by the application as opposed to the shape of the prisms. I’m not familiar with Risley prisms (I had to Google them before I write to you), but could you elaborate on what you’d like to do with them? What metric are you interested to read from OpticStudio? Based on that, you can decide what mode is better suited for your needs.

Take care,

David

Dear David,

thank you for your reply. For sure, the type of analysis that I need to do will influence the mode, wether sequential or non sequential. I am still wondering about how practically I can design the prisms in Optic Studio. There are no wedged prisms available in the polygon section, but similar geometries only and I was wondering if what I need to do is import from a cad file to have it there in my sw. 

Best, 

Giulia.

Dear Giulia,

There are multiple ways to model prisms, but I would stay away from a CAD as much as possible. This is because native object are much faster to trace through in OpticStudio. For more details, have a look at this article.

If you want to use the non-sequential mode, you can take advantage of the Rectangular Volume and Boolean Native objects. I’m attaching a file demonstrating how you can use two Rectangular Volumes and take the difference between the two to create your prism. In the screenshot below, you can view the two rectangular volumes, and the prism corresponds to the yellow volume minus the blue one.

By using a Boolean Native we can perform this operation, and obtain the result below

If you want to use the sequential mode, have a look at this article.

Let me know if this helps, and take care,

David

Dear David,

thank you so much for your precious help and time! And sorry for my late reply. This helps enormously!

Take care and thank you again,

Giulia.

Dear Giulia,

My pleasure.

There’s one pro tip in the article, which is worth mentioning here though.

I’ve used the Boolean Native to show you what it looks like, and it is fine for you to work like that. However, if you really want the fastest ray tracing possible you can actually do it without the Boolean Native. This is called the Nesting Rule and it uses the order in which the objects are defined to determine the medium in which rays are traveling. In an overlapping region, the Object with a greater identification number takes precedence. In my example above, if you make the yellow Rectangular Volume out of glass, the blue Rectangular Volume out of air, and the yellow volume is above the blue one in the non-sequential data editor, then the rays will see the yellow volume where it doesn’t overlap with blue and blue otherwise. The article goes on to show that you can use the Boolean Native for display, but use the Nesting rule for tracing (you get the best of both worlds). Anyway, that was a long detour...

Take care,

David

Dear David,

thanks again! I will get familiar first with these method and then explore what you just mentioned! my system is not too crowded on components for now, so O can pay a bit more in terms of ray tracing for now ;)

Thank you ,

cheers,

Giulia.