Hello I have some trouble in defining the ISO file of an off axis conic mirror. The design looks like that and the I can manage to do better for the ISO file.   How do you proceed in such a case ? Thank you very much in advance for your help and have a nice day Pascale  

This Zemax user analysis performs a path-analysis on an input ZRD file. The specified ZRD file will be read, and the ray paths sorted by total power in each path. This ray path analysis includes the hit-face data, meaning a ray which ghosts within a single object will be differentiated with the ray path which doesn’t ghost. This makes the analysis more robust than the native Path Analysis feature, but produces a more complex data output. As it is also slower than the native Path Analysis feature, it is recommended for use only when this level of detail is required in path analysis data. Some options are included to limit the depth of analysis to improve speed.Author: @Zach Derocher   Click here to download Date Version OpticStudio Version Comment 2020/01/01 1.0 19.4 Creation

I need the opposite of ZPL numerical function GNUM(a$), where a$ is a glass name in a given catalog and GNUM(a$) returns the glass number in the catalog.  I need the string name of the glass given the glass number in the catalog.  $GLASS(i) gives the glass on surface “i” of a loaded system rather than in a catalog.  Any tips?Mike

Example ZPL script to generate a Speos ROM V1 (.optdistortion) file from sequential Zemax.Please see the printed warning regarding UTF encoding before importing the resulting ROM into Speos.

Hi everyone! I’m working with an optical system whose image space has to be afocal. Despite this, I still get numerical results for field curvature and distortion as soon as I add a second field. So what exactly are these values referring to when the image is formed at infinity? I have the same question regarding the MTF: how is image quality being evaluated in an afocal configuration?  Additionally, when I use only a single field, Zemax doesn’t report distortion, yet I can clearly see pincushion distortion on my sensor, as shown in the image. Is there a way to quantify this effect?Many thanks!Jesús

When we use BRDF file for reflective scatter on reflector or hollow pipe inner surfaces, I normally set it like this to split incident rays to 50% specular and other 50% diffuse scattering.Question is then should we use "ray split" option in the ray trace control below? If this box is unchecked does Zemax not produce secondary scatter when first scatter rays bounce again off the reflecting surface?I copied screen shots of these settings and 3D view of the hollow pipe model for testing it below.   RegardsJS

Hi Zemaxers I am reading the Birefringent In and Birefringent Out part. and did not get a image of the k^ here,how is it got or calculated?is it the vector of the ex-ordinary ray propagation? Best regardsYANG

I don’t know about other users, but I find the new help system that requires an internet connection with login to an Ansys account to be rather annoying and less user friendly than the previous built-in CHM help file.A while back, Tom posted a note that an option for accessing help files without needing an internet connection was in the works:Just wondering if someone from Ansys can comment?Thanks,Jeff

Hi everyone setting up an easy test system (sequential mode) with entrance pupil diameter and one focusing lens POP gives reasonable results (POP beam entrance set correctly to aperture value).But adding an aperture into the system to “clean up” laser beam at 1/e² of beam diameter lets peak irradiance decrease and beam size gets wider. In normal spot diagram it looks fine (diffraction limited) with clean up aperture.Does anyone observed same issue or has a hint?Kind regardsChristian

Maybe it’s just me, but I am no more able of opening the “Go To Surface” popup window from any Editor.The following does not come up (image taken from Help file):I am using opticStudio version 2025 R1.00

I will be hosting a webinar on modelling Infrared thermal detectors in OpticStudio. The details of the webinar are below! This thread will be used to collect questions before the webinar, and to answer any questions we received during the webinar. Feel free to post your questions! Be sure to subscribe to this thread if you want to see additional discussion regarding this topic. The thread will be open to comments until Thursday, January 27th.  Webinar details:Register here: [Event has concluded, registration is no longer available]Date: Thursday, January 20thTime: 6:00am PST & 11:00am PSTPresenter: @Csilla Timar-Fulep, Senior Application Engineer for Ansys Abstract: In this webinar we will demonstrate how to model infrared thermal detectors in OpticStudio. We will first discuss how to describe thermal radiation accurately by blackbody sources. Then, we will show how to simulate the temperature calibration process of thermal detectors via the ZOS-API to enable not only qualitative a

Hi All, I am modeling optical system where there is a need to know the angles of the propgating rays after reflection, diffraction etc.However, when using the Detector viewer/radiance space, I found different angles than anticipated.For example, propagating free rays with tilt x 30, tilt y 20- I got: 21, 28.8 at the detector(attached here):What happend?  Thanks,Nadav 

Hi community,I’m trying to upload a calculated ophthalmic lens to a basic eye model. I have changed the file to correspond with the grid sag file format. After uploading the file, the surfaces of the lens have a “zig-zag” shape that I don’t understand where it’s coming from.I have tried several ways with the Z values (offset according to the 0.0 point, offset according to the highest value, leave as it is) and every time I receive a similar result.  I’m attaching here the Zar file, the Grid Sag I have created and the original XYZ file of the surface (Note: the dat file was altered so the first point represent the (-Xmin,+Ymax)) .For the first test (to understand what's happening) the front and back surfaces are the same until I could fix this problem. Thank you for your help

Hi Guys,I am trying to model a LED reflector collimator and following the link by Mark Nicholson. But that is not a reflective surface. It used a compound parabolic concentration object (CPC). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpkeze3mvLoBut I am designing a spotlight which is softer in nature (pic attached).(1)I believe the basic principle is the same in collimating the beam but how I get this hollow moonlike reflector? Is there another surface structure like CPC that will allow me to do this surface property? (2)Also, I have followed Mark Nicholson’s video (link) and it doesn’t show how I can control the beam width. It has 8 degree beam width I believe in the example, but how I can control that to make it 6 degree or 10?

Hello, all.I am writing this to discuss about what is the best focus in Optic Studio. The question occured to me when I optimized for only last distance from the image surface. I set as variable for the thickness cell which placed former  surface of image surface to optimize. and I set also criterion of optimisation as Spotsize and Wavefront to compare values of spot Diameter. Definately, both were different as you predict, and the criterion of wavefront has more accuacy than the criterion of spot size if the design was really nice. (and it was) However the thickness(distance) value after calculating of Optic Studio is different from original value caculated by another commercial software. Suddenly I thought that If I meet another situation which can not say the design is correct, it is truely tougher than this situation to say the the spot calculated by opticstudio is correct result. how do you think or how do you do if you face similar situations.Thank you for reading.

Hi zemaxers I am learning about birefringent materials, and my question is How to confirm the focuses resulted by birefringent material at the same time?  the image expected is belowBest regardsYang 

Hello,Using legacy 15.5 professional Zemax version, is there a way to update that to premium version of Zemax by paying the difference? -RP

Hi Guys, Looking for a merit function that was used for the Fly’s eye array for uniformity.Fly’s eye arrays for uniform illumination in digital projector optics – Ansys OpticsThis file also comes in the sample of the zemax file. \Documents\Zemax\Samples\Design Applications\Illumination Systems\1- Flys Eye IntegratorsIf anyone can share the .mf file will be helpful. Thanks, 

Hi Guys, using Opticstudio Professional version. Is there a way to optimize a CAD file (.iges or .step) in the professional version or the CAD file can only be used for visualization and ray tracing? 

Dear Community -I try to retrieve tilt infromation from (in coodinate break surfaces) using the ZOP API and Python.(Ansys Opticstudio 2024R2, Python 3.8 etc.)Using the boilerplate files, getting thicknesses etc. works well.     thissurf=TheLDE.GetSurfaceAt(i)    print('\n',i)    print('Type: ',thissurf.Type)    print(thissurf.Material)    print(thissurf.Radius)    print(thissurf.Thickness)    print(thissurf.TiltDecenterData.BeforeSurfaceTiltX)    print(thissurf.TiltDecenterData.AfterSurfaceTiltX) The attempt to get tilt and decenter data gives 0.0 in the coordinate brake surfaces, where tiltswhere deliberately set.Any idea what I might have misunderstood? Best regards, Stefan

Hello,I am currently trying to understand the sampling behavior of the FFT PSF analysis in OpticStudio. The analysis has two sampling parameters:‘Sampling’, hereafter referred to as S, documented as “The size of the ray grid used to sample the pupil”. ‘Display’, hereafter referred to as D, documented as “The display size indicates what portion of the computed data will be drawn when a graphic display is generated. The display grid can be any size from 32 x 32 up to twice the sampling grid size. Smaller display sizes will show less data, but at higher magnification for better visibility”.Based on implementations described in the literature and basic tests with OpticStudio, I assumed the PSF calculation works like this:Sample the wavefront at the pupil with a sampling S; Zero-pad the wavefront to the maximum possible display sampling Dmax; Crop the result to a size D. This last step was inferred from OpticStudio’s output.Based on the properties of the Fourier transform, I assume the foll

Hello all!I would like to design an Object which is a 1D array of collimated beams and look at all the beams on a single POP surface? Not discrete POP windows with one field at a time, but a single window with all beams.Goal is to measure:Beam Width of each individual beam in X and Y Peak-to-Peak distance and Centroid-to-Centroid distance between let’s say 2 extreme beams emanating from the 1D array of collimated beams.In other words, I would like to measure individual beam profiles of multiple collimated beams using POP (beam widths in X and Y)  and also measure the distance/separation between these beams (peak/centroid/etc.) as part of tolerance analysis? How would I model this in Zemax? Cheers - Asuku 

Hi, I’m trying to learn how to use tolerancing tools in zemax. For this, I uploaded a singlet file from thorlabs catalog, to start with something simple. No merit function or variables in this file. I do not understand why the RMS spot value is not the same in the tolerancing summary and in the spot diagram.I tried different sampling but it didn’t help. Here the values are close (7.7 and 9.1 microns), but with more complex files the difference was really large.See capture: 

Hi All! I have created an User Extension using C++ and it has built .exe file and can run it when I open Zemax. Is it possible for me to run the user extensions in MATLAB or Python using any ZOS API function?