Optimization is extremely important in a computer-aided design. However, it's never as easy as just a click on a button. We usually need to carefully set up the variable and merit function. While there are no a general rules to follow for all systems, there are still some useful trick to follow for most of common cases.
Here I'm sharing some from my experience. If you put yours in reply, I will also update this thread.:)
[Michael Cheng]
1. Keep this in mind: Always check and consider whether a variable is really required to be a variable.
* If the variable won't changing system performance much, turn off it first. You can turn it on at final stage for a fine tune. A typical case is the thickness of a lens. In many cases, they contribute much less than those AIR thicknesses in the system.
* Before careful that, if you have a redundant variable, for example Radius on an isolated STOP, the optimizer may be confused and just cannot work well.
* If during optimization, a variable just tend to reach its limit defined in merit function, just set it to the limit value and turn off variable. A typical case is you may find that optimization want a lens to be as thick as possible and always reach the limitation you set up in merit function.
2. In merit function, if a boundary cannot be exceeded, do not put high weight. Instead, shrink or swell the boundary a little. For example, if the central thickness of the lens should be smaller than 2 mm and you find the optimization always give 2.01 mm. Try to shrink the limitation to 1.99 instead of set a Weight to 1000 or more. A too high Weight make the operand too important and optimizer may find the others are just not important and it's very slow or even not working in improving other operands.
[Heng Li]
* If you're designing an imaging system, always give Contrast Optimization a try! Systems using Contrast Optimization ususally have a faster converging speed.
* If you're optimizing a non-sequential illumination system or an imaging system with very big aberrations, Orthogonal Descent usually works better.