Efficiency Tips & Tricks for OpticStudio

  • 2 September 2020
  • 35 replies
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Alissa Wilczynski
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Share your tips & tricks for efficiently using OpticStudio with the community! 


There are lots of little ways that we adapt our use of OpticStudio to streamline our work. These are usually learned over time, from colleagues, or from technical support, but they aren't typically found in other product education resources. You might have a favorite keyboard shortcut, saved settings for a particular analysis, a macro that automates 3 steps in your process tied to a hotkey, or a million other ideas. Help your fellow OpticStudio users and learn some new tricks yourself.

35 replies

Sahil
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Hello  David,


Yeah I did in Non sequential editor. Yeah could be David 


Thanks


David

David.Nguyen
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Hi Sahil,


Thanks for checking, you did it for non-sequential right?


Anyway, I don't mind, maybe its just my installation which is faulty.


The point is rather that its a cool feature to know about :D


Take care,


David

Sahil
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Hello David,


Thanks Sandrine for letting me in . I have tested in OS build 21.2 and it seems working fine . On clicking on Material column it opens correct material .


Sahil

David.Nguyen
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Thanks for looking into that Sandrine, but just to let you know that it doesn't bother me. It is just something I noticed.


Take care,


David

Sandrine Auriol
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Hi David


I can't seem to be able to reproduce the issue. If I am on the material column, then opening the Materials Catalog opens the right material. I am testing in 21.2 too. I'll ask someone else to have a look. I might be missing something.


Sandrine

Sandrine Auriol
David.Nguyen
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Hi Sandrine,


I have setup a non-sequential file with a single Standard Lens object (default parameters) made of N-BK7. If I click the Material cell, and open the Materials Catalog, it goes to AMTIR1 from the AMTIR.AGF catalog. I guess because its the first one in alphabetical order. I'm running the May 24, 2021 version (21.2).


Take care,


David

Sandrine Auriol
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Hi David


It seems to work for me in non-sequential mode too. Would you mind checking again?


Sandrine

Sandrine Auriol
David.Nguyen
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Something I just discovered this morning, is that if you click on the Material cell of a surface with a catalog glass, and then open the Libraries..Materials Catalog, it automatically opens at the right page, displaying all the relevant information of that particular glass without having to search for it :)


Saddly, this does not seem to work in non-sequential mode.

yuan.chen
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To obtain POP image on shaded view, you can:



  1. Open the POP settings to save the .ZBF file at all surfaces, please make sure that the .zbf file you save has the same name as the .zmx



 


2. Select the surface you want to show, go to the physical optics-> check draw fiber coupling on shaded model



3. Open shaded model plot



 


 

Have a nice day (〃'▽'〃)
yuan.chen
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Add your topic to favorites



 


 

Have a nice day (〃'▽'〃)
P
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Thanks, Angel!


I'll probably use both of these settings!


-- Greg

Angel Morales
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Hi there!


Thanks for your follow-up post here. If you wanted to make Auto Apply be unchecked by default, I believe you can do that in the Project Preferences...General tab:



Let us know if you have any more questions/if I've misunderstood your request here!


~ Angel

Angel Morales | Senior Application Engineer | Zemax
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Re: Open the settings before running an analysis: Show Options First


Posted 28 days ago by Sandrine Auriol, Zemax Senior Optical Engineer


'When an analysis takes some time to update, it can be frustrating to wait and especially when the settings are not yours.

But there is a setting in Setup... Project Preferences...Graphics...Show Options First. When it is ticked, the settings box will appear before any analysis graphic or text is computed and displayed.'


I will try this immediately!!  I hate waiting for a long analysis to start running when I re-open a file, and having to remember to try to interrupt it with TERMINATE.  But...


Couldn't you guys just make 'Auto Apply' UNCHECKED be the default condition on opening an analysis??

Thomas Magnac
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You are right, here they are. 

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Alberto.Donazzan
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Hi Sandrine,


I couldn't find the file 'OpticStudio_new_shortcuts.CFG' inside the zip.

Sandrine Auriol
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Here are Thomas' shortcut keys.

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Sandrine Auriol
David.Nguyen
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To complement what Berta was saying about arithmetic operations in a cell. If you want to subtract a number X from a cell, you should type plus, minus, and then your value X.


+-X

Otherwise, I think it just puts the value minus X into the cell.


Angel Morales
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Another neat thing to keep in mind is that some analyses support the use of the left/right arrow keys when looking at a surface-specific result. For example, we can use the right arrow key to scroll through different surfaces in the Footprint Diagram:



Another analysis that uses this is the Beam File Viewer. Very handy when you want to check the rays/beam at different surfaces relatively quickly!


And David, you might have seen this already, but you can tweak existing shortcuts in the Project Preferences:



Though, we don't have anything in OpticStudio to re-program yourself 😄


~ Angel

Angel Morales | Senior Application Engineer | Zemax
Chris Normanshire
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Apologies David. Copy is indeed ctrl+c and paste is ctrl+v. Thanks for pointing that out. I've corrected my post. 

David
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Thanks, Chris. But on my computer, ctrl+c is copy and ctrl+v is paste. Which is good because it's pretty much industry standard. Now if only I could get ctrl+z back as undo. Although I've been using it for variable for nearly 20 years, so it might be too late to reprogram myself.  ;-)

Kind regards, David
Chris Normanshire
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Don't forget copy/paste!


The editors in OpticStudio are essentially spreadsheets, so if you need to enter multiple similar rows into an editor then using standard copy/paste functionality can be a real time saver.


For example, if you'd like to calculate the chief ray height at multiple surfaces in the MFE then you can simply set up the required operand for a single surface.



Then copy and paste multiple instances.



Then all that is needed is to modify the surface number on each line.



For added speed this is best done by using th ctrl+c (copy) and ctrl+v (paste) keyboard shortcut, although it is also possible with the mouse by left-clicking the row number to highlights and then right-clicking the row number to bring up the context menu.



The attached video shows the whole process. This technique will work in all OpticStudio editors. It will also work with blocks of operands/rows, so in the example above you could initially setup lines for both the chief and marginal rays height and copy/paste simultaneously.

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K
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Insert rows above and below in editor


If we press insert on our keyboard, we will get a new row in our editor above the row we currently have highlighted.


If we want to insert a row below the row we currently have highlighted, we can use ctrl+insert.


K
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Easily identify parameter numbers


Many operands and ZPL commands require you to put in the 'parameter number' of a surface you are interested in.


Let’s say as an example, I wanted to find out what the parameter number is for 'Tilt About Z' on a Coordinate Break.



The easy way to identify the parameter number will be to insert a standard surface above the Coordinate Break and compare the column headers as you switch back and forth between the two surfaces.



We can see from this that when the Standard surface is highlighted, the column header will change to ‘Par 5’. So, Tilt About Z corresponds to Parameter 5.

Hui Chen
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1. Usage of the Reload All Surfaces button


After making changes to a text file that's used to define certain Surfaces/Objects/Apertures, for example, User Defined Aperture, Source .DAT file, Polygon objects, use the Reload All Surfaces buttom to update the change in the Lens Data Editor / Non-Sequential Component Editor. 



2. Double click inside any analysis window to update results


3. Leave the Auto Apply button unchecked


This will stop analysis window from auto re-compute until all changes are entered.



 

Csilla Timar-Fulep
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Move selection when typing into Editors


If you would like to customize the data in multiple cells in any of the Editors, it can be useful to set which direction you would like to move the selection automatically after pressing Enter. If it is one specific parameter you want to edit for multiple surfaces/objects, select Down or Up move. If it is a specific/object surface you want to modify, select Right or Left. Or you can just untick the box, so there is no move in any direction:

Csilla Timar-Fulep

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