Hello @Olieli,

Zernike coefficients can be tricky and when to use the different surface types is not always clear.

Let’s assume that the coefficients provided are for sag. They are likely to be Standard or Fringe. Annular is unlikely unless the optic is annular.

The manual shows the sag equation for either the Zernike Fringe Sag and Zernike Standard Sag as,

The equation shows that the surface is the composite of “three” terms. The first is the curvature and conic term. The second is the aspheric summation. The last is the Zernike summation. If the report does not provide any aspheric terms then those fields can remain unpopulated in the surface description.

Hopefully, the report would provide the normalization radius; however, if it does not, I would see if there is a clear aperture specified and use its half-value (semi-aperture) as the normalization radius. If there was a sag table provided, Zemax can provide a sag table representation of any surface and that can be used as a check that the surface was entered correctly.

The coefficients for the two types are a little different and hopefully the report states what type or the coefficients which would then indicate which type.

For example, Zernike Standard Polynomials are,

and the Fringe Polynomials are,

Hopefully that helps to clear things up.