I’m interested in automating a couple of simple steps using ZPL. I don’t find a reference table of the names of different parameters in ZPL in the Help.   How do I print a particular merit function result e.g. CENX at a particular station, and how do I change the value of a Coordinate Break’s “Decenter X” or “Tilt X” etc.?

Hi, I'm running Zemax Optic Studio Professional, version 20.2.2. Whenever I'm working with large pixel arrays, or high (> 1024 x 1024) sampling in physical optics propagation, and my detector viewer/beam file viewer is set to text view, I get a message box saying 'Text is too long to display. Use Copy All or Save As' to retrieve the entire file'.  This message box doesn't cause a problem as I'm exporting the data in a macro anyway, but it means that during a long macro where I'm running POP multiple times, I have to constantly watch OpticStudio as it pauses the macro until I dismiss the message box, which is obviously impractical.  Is there a way to either  a) Increase the maximum allowed text file to be displayed within OpticStudio, or b) Suppress the message box, as the data export is absolutely fine Thank you!

Hello,   I am doing a polarizaiton analysis and am running into an issue when it comes to updating my surfaces. I have a short macro that updates the tilt about x for a coordinate break before a mirror, and the tilt about x for a coordinate break after a mirror. Then, I am using the OPEV function to get the transmission of a surface further in the system. The problem is, when I use the macro to udpate the tilts, the results don't show in the OPEV function unless I manually refresh the results. This will not work for me as I am working with a very large data set and thus need to be able to do it without manually refreshing. Just a simple example of the setup is given below.    SETSURFACEPROPERTY 8, 10, 3, 3 # sets the tilt about x before the mirror (surface 9) SETSURFACEPROPERTY 10, 10, -3, 3 # resents the tilt about x for the whole system, esentially just tilting the mirror in the whole system code_coda = OCOD('CODA') # de

Hello Everybody, is it possible through the api, to get the surface Index from the highlighted or selected surface?

Hey peeps, There are many different flavors of Python available. If my interest in mainly in working with ZOS-API, are any of these flavors preferable over the others? What's the best Python distribution for ZOS-API? - mark

OpticStudio is no different from any other software in using floating-point representation for storing numbers other than integers. Although the accuracy is very high, sometimes a number like 0.7 can be stored internally as a very close approximation, like 0.700000000001712 or 0.6999999999998394 for example. For calculations these differences are usually acceptable. The differences are generally confined to the digits near the limits of double precision storage anyway. Be very careful, however, using numbers like these in a comparative, like checking if a variable is less than another. In Zemax Programming Language (ZPL), OS operands, and some types of displays (bar charts), particularly with discrete data divisions, you might see unexpected results. For instance, in the following code, there is a big difference between A being 7.1 and A being 7.099999999981728. IF A >= 7.1   PRINT 'Success' ELSE &n

Hello everyone,   I am a grad student at the University of Arizona and I am working on a project that will require me to make use of the MATLAB ZOS-API feature. While I have never used this feature before, I familiarized myself with enough of it to at least get started. I am running into the peculiar problem that when I click the feature within Zemax (either standalone application or interactive), instead of generating a Matlab code and opening the Matlab application, it instead opens and displays the code within Mathematica. I only recently installed Mathematica on my computer, and I do recall that before it was installed, Zemax would open up the Matlab application just fine. Interestingly, now I cannot get it to open up through Matlab.  While I thought one solution would be to copy and paste the code into Matlab and then track down the directory that Zemax created within the ZOS-API Projects folder, this does not seem to be working. If anyone else ha

Is it possible to calculate the 'field Type' 'Angle' (Code 0) from the 'field Type' 'Real Image Height' (Code 3) with a ZPL script? It is basically what the Zemax 'Field data editor' offers with the 'Convert to' option. However, I do not need to *convert* the field type, but just have to determine the value. With 'Single Ray Trace' as well as with the operand 'RAID', I only get one angle. But I need the two angles as defined for the 'field Type' 'Angle' Thank you and best regards, Christof.

Hello,  I am trying to run a polarization analysis on a system and am using different polarization states as input. I have created a macro that does this by first using 'POLDEFINE' to define a polarization state, and then using the CODA function to get the information I need. I then use the 'POLDEFINE' function again to describe a new polarization state, and the use the CODA function again. Though, this is unfortunately not working. For some reason, all data sets are the exact same. I am curious how the POLDEFINE is actually working. Are the CODA and POLDEFINE functions possibly decoupled? And if so how do I go about changing the system input polarization using the zpl? 

Hi, The Attach Files is my problem. Why i can't Connect to ZEMAX with microsoft excel . Can you teach me how to Connect to ZEMAX. Thank you!

Hello,  is it possible to export dxf file from api? If so, How? Thank you.

How can i get through focus mtf data with zpl ?

As stated in the title I need to compile my own DLLs for my system. I don't have access to Visual studio or Visual Studio community, and in general, I try to work as much as possible with open source solutions. Can somebody help me to set up an environment to compile a DLL with free and open source IDE and compiler? Ideally Visual Studio Code. I'm working on Windows 10 x64.

Hello comunity,  I'm developing a C# standalone application and I want to know if it is possible and how to get access to the event handlers, something like 'primarySystem.Saved'; 'primarySystem.Opened' and so on in order to do other operations like update UI or get data.  Thank you in advance.  Regards

Hi, The tutorial on 'Simulating diffraction efficiency of surface-relief grating using the RCWA method' assumes a unit cell comprising of one period with linear grating of fixed duty cycle. I am wondering if anyone knows if we can simulate 1. curved diffraction grating and/or 2. diffraction grating with a chirp (i.e assume  a super cell comprising of multiple unit cells with varying period and fill factor)?  Thanks, Arvinder

Hello! Is there a shortcut to be able to comment out entire blocks of code at once? 

I am currently tyring to run a macro from the command line of my computer. The macro includes the command : >>> OUTPUT 'exampleFile', APPEND This is used to create an output txt file by the name of 'exampleFile.' Now, when I run this macro through the command line, no file is generated. But, when this macro is run through optic studio, there is a file that is generated named exampleFile. I don't understand why this step is ignored when the macro is used through the command line?  

Zemax has the wonderful ability to add user-defined surfaces and objects, but they have to be compiled by the user into a dll. With the Community version of Visual Studio 2019, does anybody know (a) which components of Visual Studio need to be installed, (b) what settings are needed in order to “Attach to Process…” in order to debug, and (c) what settings are needed to compile routines correctly. The background here is that the user has to look through a set of examples to work out how to do anything, and these are mostly in C, probably from 20 years ago. There are 2 very useful articles about how to compile a dll, and debug a dll, but they are for C++, with no explanation about when and why C++ is needed. Some VS2017 compiler settings are given, but a lot of others are not mentioned, and there is no information about how to install Visual Studio. The ability to debug a file is phenomenal, but they do not atta

Hi all, I am currently doing an optics project with some mechanical simulations. We are trying to simulate the surface deformation with mechanical design software. Then input the data to ZEMAX. If I have a sag data like the attached, could I input these data to get the surface in ZEMAX? Including radius of curvature and aspherical coefficients. Thank you, Raymond

Hi all, I'm working with Matlab and trying to use the ModifySettings on a cfg file to update a Physical Optics Propagation analysis but continue to encounter an error. This is my setup so far:   TheSystem = TheApplication.PrimarySystem; testFile = System.String.Concat('\\...\','myFile.zmx'); %the '...' is my directory TheSystem.LoadFile(testFile,false); pop = TheSystem.Analyses.New_Analysis(ZOSAPI.Analysis.AnalysisIDM.PhysicalOpticsPropagation); pop.Terminate(); pop.WaitForCompletion(); pop_setting = pop.GetSettings(); cfg = System.String.Concat('\\...\','myCFG.cfg'); pop_setting.LoadFrom(cfg); pop_setting.ModifySettings(cfg, 'POP_PARAM1', 0.010) %Beam Waist in X.    This last l

I am trying to generate a compound lens with front and back surfaces made up of two Biconic Zernike surfaces.  One of the aspheric parameters on the front biconic surface is generated by a ZPL macro.  When building this model, the compound lens ignores the value provided by the ZPL solve, treating it as it were zero.  Is there any way to pass the surface generated by the macro solve to the compound lens without having it be ignored?

Hi, Is there a way to simulate a cylindrical lens (curve in X-Z plane) with a diffraction grating on the cylindrical surface that varies as a function of X in OpticStudio? Or would I have to write a custom DLL for simulate this? Thanks, Ben

Hi, There is a field 'Data File' in the GUI when Source File is selected as the source (in non-sequential mode). How can I load this file using the ZOS-API (NET connection in Python)? I create a ray file using Python in the right path (\ZEMAX\Objects\Sources\Source Files) I found the tutorial for navigating the API documentation very useful, unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to do this. Is there a way to turn my txt file to binary through the API? And could I export the image from a detector directly using the API?   Thank you!

Hello, I have a test bench with a scanning laser passing through an optical setup. I have the firing pattern of this laser and I wanna know what will be the impact of the laser firing pattern miss the target. The idea is to do a tolerance analysis for each angle of the scanning but there are a lot of angles to do this tolerancing. How can I do a tolerance analysis for a big set of tilts around X and Y? Thank you, Narciso Soares

In ZOS-API what functions do we use to open an archive file and select the same options as the interface?