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People & Pointers

Use this space to show off your skills, introduce yourself, or to chat about the latest in the world of optics.

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Richard.MigliaccioSingle Emitter

posted in People & Pointers

Introducing East Coast Optical Technologies

I’m Rich Migliaccio, president of East Coast Optical Technologies. We’re an engineering firm specializing in the design, development and prototyping of advanced electro-optical systems. Expertise include optoelectronic and optomechanical design with knowledge that goes beyond the visible spectrum.We provide cost effective design solutions for light management and light based sensor platforms using state of the art design tools and decades of experience. We’ve been providing these services since 2002.see https://www.ecotechnologies.biz/ for more information.

4 days ago

nikitasatcikMonochrome

asked in People & Pointers

Converting CAD data of the TIR lens into the parametric surface for optimization in NSQ mode

It is common for illumination design to have complex shapes which are difficult to describe by a mathematical formula. For example, custom collimators, waveguides, reflectors, and so on could be represented by freeform curves. When such optical components are designed in a CAD program, we can't optimize their shape in Zemax after importing CAD files.To overcome this issue, I provide an example of how to convert CAD data of a TIR lens into a parametric surface and optimize it for light collimation.In this example I’m using TIR lens. It consists of TIR surface and refractive surface, as shown below.Reference: Pencil of RaysFirst, we will fit TIR surface.Zemax has a Freeform Z object, which is formed by drawing a cubic spline curve through a series of points in the YZ plane:Our target is to retrieve these YZ pairs from a solid model cross-section via cubic spline interpolation. Spline interpolation can be done in python using scipy.interpolate.CubicSpline(Z,Y):Cubic Spline InterpolationAf

11 days ago

Jeff.WildeLuminary

posted in People & Pointers

Modeling speckle

Speckle is created by the interference of multiple, mutually coherent optical fields that have random phases at any point on a detection surface. This could be associated with laser light scattering from a rough surface or from the interference of multiple modes emanating from a multimode fiber. For multimode fibers, it may be best to use POP in a sequential model in which the beam leaving the fiber is modeled as a coherent superposition of LP (or LG) modes. Alternatively, we show here how a simple non-sequential ray-based model can be used to simulate speckle arising from rough-surface scattering. To model light leaving a rough surface, we can employ Huygens’ Principle and use a set of point sources that are randomly phased over (0,2pi). This assumes the height variations on the surface are large enough to create such a random process. Ideally, we would use a single non-sequential source that emits rays uniformly over some spatial region and within a defined cone angle. However,

26 days ago

Tom PickeringZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

[Webinar] With Ansys Zemax Choosing the Optimal Fabrication Chain at Minimum Cost for Your Lens is Just One Click Away [Q&A]

This thread is dedicated to the webinar: With Ansys Zemax Choosing the Optimal Fabrication Chain at Minimum Cost for Your Lens is Just One Click Away. Any questions received during the webinar will be responded to as a reply on this thread. Webinar detailsPresenters: @Tom Pickering, Manager Product Management at Ansys Zemax Oliver Fähnle (@PanDao), co-founder of PanDao Oliver recently provided an interview to our team in the March Community Newsletter! Click here to read more about his background. Abstract:PanDao helps you identify the optimal fabrication chain at any point during the optical design process. Now with the collaboration with Ansys Zemax OpticStudio real-time producibility analyses of your optical designs are now achievable within one click. In this webinar we will discuss how to export your lens data to PanDao and showcase how PanDao will determine the optimal fabrication chain at the minimum cost. Learn how PanDao and Ansys Zemax OpticStudio can help you balance bo

1 month ago

Michael ChengZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

Reverse a HUD system

This post provides a potentially working method for reversing an off-axial sysetm such like a HUD. It may not work with all systems, but have been proved to be useful for some systems.Turn off RA. Clear all fields. This is becuase RA will throw erorrs during the following tweaking. And the field data is unlikely to be unchnaged so let's just remove it and re-add them later. If the number of mirrors is odd, add one more mirror after object, using the Add Mirror Tool. Add a dummy surface after object and before image. Select all surface and reverse. After reversing it, multiply all decenter/tilt by -1 and set Order flag to opposite. Remember to adjust image and object distance. and turn on the RA again. You can remove the dummy mirror if you add it at step 2.In the attached video, we showed an example of using this process with the following example in the KBA. Note in the video, I forgot to do the final step to turn on the Ray Aiming.https://support.zemax.com/hc/en-us/articles/150000557

2 months ago

Michael ChengZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

Zemax - Lumerical RCWA dynamic linking updates & known bugs

Overview This post provides the following two contents:Maintaining a list of improvements & bugfixes history. Users can easily check when and what problems are solved and what improvements were made. Gathering feedbacks or a place for users to discuss.:)For details of how to use this feature, see the following knowledge base article:Dynamic workflow between Lumerical RCWA and Zemax OpticStudioFor downloading the plugin for legacy versions, see the following community post:Useful ResourcesDynamic workflow between Lumerical RCWA and Zemax OpticStudio Exit Pupil Expander with 1D-2D Gratings RCWA Solver - Simulation Object RCWA Solver Introduction Known and unsolved bugsMax Order X/Y cannot be negativeCurrently if the Max Order X/Y are negative, the k vector domain in Lumerical RCWA is not correctly set by the dynamic link. This will be fixed in lumerical-sub-wavelength-dynamic-link-2023R2.dll.Version of Ansys Common LicenseThis is not a bug of dynamic link but will affect dynamic link

3 months ago

yuan.chenZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

yuan.chenZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

Do you find weird behavior for MNCA, MNEA, MNEG, MNEG, MXRE, MNRI

Have you noticed that the value changes as you change the target value of the operand?

5 months ago

Christophe.WeisseInfrared

posted in People & Pointers

Optimizing a model glass index in Non Sequenial Mode

There is no direct option to flag the index of a model glass as variable in the non-sequential mode.Yet, if you need to use this index during optimization, there is an alternative.You can define the material as gradient index material (GRIN) in the “Index” tab of the object properties:And then use the Multi-Configuration Editor to make this parameter a variable.The index of a GRIN material is then available with the NPRO operand, parameter #201 : And you can then add it as variable.Quick notes:This technique of using the Multi Configuration Editor to add parameters that are not otherwise available can be applied for many other use-cases. The description of all Multi-Configuration operands, and their parameters, is available in the Help files of OpticStudio

5 months ago

AllieZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

[Webinar] Optotune Liquid Lenses Added to Zemax Stock Components [Q&A]

This thread is dedicated to the webinar: Optotune Liquid Lenses Added to Zemax Stock Components. Any questions received during the webinar will be responded to as a reply on this thread. [The event has concluded] Webinar detailsPresenters: Mark Ventura, Vice President Sales & Marketing at Optotune Mark is electrical engineer and has co-founded Optotune in 2008. As VP Sales & Marketing he has developed the market for liquid lenses with a focus on machine vision. Michael Büeler (@Michael.Bueeler), Head of Optics Engineering & VP Quality at Optotune Michael holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and Optics and is responsible for optical design at Optotune. Employing Optotune’s liquid lenses has designed several focusing, zoom and illumination systems for mobile phone cameras, factory automation and med-tech applications. Abstract:In the past 10 years, liquid lenses have evolved to become a well-established solution for fast and reliable focusing. In this webinar we will discus

4 months ago

mojtaba.falahatiZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

[Webinar] Equation Driven Surfaces for Optical Parts Creation in OpticsBuilder [Q&A]

This thread is dedicated to the upcoming webinar: Equation Driven Surfaces for Optical Parts Creation in OpticsBuilder. Any questions received during the webinar will be responded to as a reply on this thread. Feel free to post your own questions! The speaker will be notified and will respond as long as the thread is still open.Be sure to subscribe to this thread if you want to see additional discussion regarding this webinar topic. The thread will be open to new replies for a limited time following the event. [The event has concluded] Webinar detailsDate: Thursday, November 24thTime: 6:00 - 6:45 AM PDT | 11:00 - 11:45 AM PDTPresenter: Mojtaba Falahati, Senior Application EngineerAbstract:The ability to save the parts into PDM systems now includes the option to recall the equations used to generate the surfaces. Legacy import of geometry into OpticsBuilder uses splines/NURBS sampling based on the equations provided by OpticStudio which offers speed and accuracy high enough for most app

5 months ago

yuan.chenZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

Human vision Simulation

I would like to list something I find about how to simulate human eye and human vision.

6 months ago

yuan.chenZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

How to add another material to Gradient 9

Information from help file:The Setup Tab > Editors Group (Setup Tab) > Lens Data Editor > Sequential Surfaces (lens data editor) > Gradient 9

6 months ago

Xu ChenSingle Emitter

posted in People & Pointers

ROC (radius of curvature) can be divided in half on the parabolic mirror between the add-on and base composite surfaces, but not Spherical surface

Hi Zemax community, a question regarding why ROC (radius of curvature) can be divided in half on the parabolic mirror between the add-on and base composite surfaces while keeping the perfect focus, but not the same case for the spherical surface type, is often asked. Here we will give an on-axis mirror example to demonstrate the math correlation behind this concept. First, let’s start with an on-axis spherical mirror (Example file: 1_SphericalMirror.ZAR): In this example, the incident rays originating from the center of sphere curvature are reflected by the spherical mirror surface, back along the original way. The radius of curvature and back focal length is -100mm. No optical aberration is introduced in this example, the spot diameter will be perfect. Fig 1. Spherical mirror layout Now let’s make a comparative file with an add-on composite surface at the front of the base spherical surface (Example file: 2_SphericalMirror_WithAddOnComposite.ZAR). To main the same EFL as the first

6 months ago

Alessandra CroceZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

The new Composite Surface is out!

With the new Composite surface it’s now possible to tolerance the irregularity of almost all surfaces in OpticStudio! TIRR, TEZI and TEXI tolerancing operands have been expanded to allow for irregularity simulations of surfaces other than the previously supported Standard, Even Aspheric, Toroidal and Zernike Fringe Sag. Simply use the desired tolerancing operand on any surface that can be used as Composite, and run a Tolerancing analysis as usual. OpticStudio will automatically add the appropriate Composite Add-on to the surface being tolerance and assess the effect of the perturbation against the chosen tolerancing criterion. For more information, check Introduction to Composite Surface.

6 months ago

David.VegaZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

Introducing the NSQ Single Ray Trace Tool

One of our goals in Ansys is to model reality so our customers get the most accurate modeling analysis that agrees with their measurements in the real world. As part of this goal, we are enhancing the Non-Sequential mode in OpticStudio. In the 22.3 release, the team brought to life the NSC single ray trace analysis; let me tell you, it is powerful and cool!With the NSC single ray trace tool, you can add a source ray anywhere in the system space to evaluate light propagating. This tool will not modify or add an NSC object in the editor, allowing you to keep your editor system clean. Also, it provides all the ray data just as the ray database does. No more filtering ray databases to find the ray you want to evaluate! If that is not enough, the tool is also available in the ZOS-API and allows the extraction of any computed parameters. See attached example code for a basic introduction to this tool.Also, look at the NSC single ray trace layout tab at the bottom of the analysis window. Here

6 months ago

David.VegaZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

Updated Export to Speos Lens System in 22.3

Have you wondered how your optical system designed in OpticStudio will behave in the real 3D world? Ansys Speos can take your OpticStudio model and fully simulate your system in a 3D environment, including some environmental challenges such as rain and fog. But we all know that modeling an entire optical system in a complete 3D digital environment can be computationally costly. To reduce modeling expenditure for preliminary studies, we are introducing the Export to Speos Lens System (SLS) in OpticStudio 22.3.The SLS is a reduced-order model of your optical system based on a camera obscura model where the exported optical system acts as an optical transfer function. Therefore, the SLS does not carry all the information for complete modeling of the imaging capabilities. Still, it can provide valuable insights early in the design process, such as perceived image quality and irradiance models. The SLS can deliver these results within less than five minutes saving time during preliminary an

6 months ago

Michael.YoungInfrared

posted in People & Pointers

Global design of an off-the-shelf objective lens with no a priori design and macro-enabled optimization

My article on global lens design and using commercial off-the-shelf lenses was recently published. This was my “swan song” before taking my current position. Here is a link to the article. There are resources included for the ZPL code. Hope you enjoy.https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.61.10.105104AbstractSynthesis of original optical designs is a challenging endeavor for novice lens designers. It is made more difficult when attempting to design a compound lens from off-the-shelf lenses. All but the simplest compound lenses resist ready analysis or understanding from a first-principles approach of geometric optics; however, many optical design packages include powerful optimization algorithms for both local and global searches. Despite the power of these tools, the initial construction of a starting lens and merit function remains crucial to the effective utilization of the optimizer. A workflow is presented for a generic starting design, construction of the merit function, and the optimizati

7 months ago

Angel MoralesZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

[Webinar] Modeling a Lidar System in OpticStudio: Characterizing Range for Lidar Systems [Q&A]

This thread is dedicated to the upcoming webinar: Modeling a Lidar System in OpticStudio: Characterizing Range for Lidar Systems. Any questions received during the webinar will be responded to as a reply on this thread. Feel free to post your own questions! The speaker will be notified and will respond as long as the thread is still open.Be sure to subscribe to this thread if you want to see additional discussion regarding this webinar topic. The thread will be open to new replies for a limited time following the event. [The webinar has concluded] Webinar detailsDate: Thursday, October 27thTime: 6:00 - 6:45 AM PDT | 11:00 - 11:45 AM PDTPresenter: Angel Morales, Senior Application EngineerAbstract:Modeling a Lidar in OpticStudio: Characterizing Range for Lidar Systems. For lidar systems, a key specification is the range at which the lidar can detect a positive return signal. This characteristic is determined by several factors, such as the energy contained in the light pulse sent by the

6 months ago

Steven.LacavaZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

Tech Tip Tuesday Cell Phone Design 10-18-2022

Tech Tip Tuesday Cell Phone Design 10-18-2022 There was a time when a phone was used to make calls, now it keeps track of our appointments, allows us to shop from virtually anywhere, read emails, and watch pointless cat videos. The one feature most people rave about when it comes to phones though is oddly not the phone part at all, it is the camera most people are concerned about. Given the amount of real estate cell phone makers dedicate to their cameras, and the amount of resources that go into developing them, the major brands are also concerned about cameras. This brings optics to the forefront and a cell phone has a lot of unique design challenges. We have high expectations of our phones, after all we carry them everywhere. They need to perform in all weather conditions, every type of lighting and not be damaged from shock, vibration or general carelessness. A tall order for any product, but to do all that and stay within the tolerances needed for an optical system, it is a very t

7 months ago

yuan.chenZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

How to apply the same coating properties to many obejcts

I had headache in applying the same coating on multiple lenses. My first thought is to use a ZPL, before I start, I decided to consult the non-sequential specialists in our team. @Kensuke.Hiraka and @Michael Cheng taught me this trick. They helped me save 10 minutes. So, I would like to share with you this to save you some time with the time I saved to create this post😆.If the object has the same number of faces, you can set the same coating by opening the property with multiple lines selected.If the lines are far apart, you can select multiple lines by pressing Ctrl and selecting.

7 months ago

Flurin HerrenZemax Staff

posted in People & Pointers

Export CAD files - Origin of Coordinate System

Hello there,Let's say we have a very simple singlet system with two collimated fields which are focused onto an image plane. We now like to export this optical system, as a STEP format, from OpticStudio into our CAD environment. We can do so with the Export CAD File tool which can be found in the File tab of OpticStudio. Once the optical system is opened up in CAD (Here Ansys SpaceClaim) it looks like that:As visible on the image of the exported Singlet above, the origin of the global coordinate system within the CAD environment is set at the beginning of the rays. This is because the first Surface was set as the Global Coordinate Reference in the Surface Properties of OpticStudio. To change the coordinate system origin point of the exported cad file, another surface can be set to be the Global Coordinate Reference surface.Taking this Singlet as show case example, it can be observed that the origin of the global coordinate system has shifted from the beginning of the rays to the front

7 months ago

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