We have a sophisticated set of tools in STAR for handling, extracting, and analyzing Rigid-body Motions (RBMs).
Often, the most important question for STOP analysis is, “Where are the parts?” Higher-order deformations and thermal index changes generally have a smaller effect on the final system performance, compared to the location of the parts. Also, errors in part positions can be compensated for in a way that higher-order problems cannot. For example, space systems often have a focus adjust to correct any shift in the detector location in the orbital conditions. Or, optical systems may be deliberately misaligned during ground assembly so that the final part positions are correct in orbit.
In STAR, users can separate the RBMs from the higher-order deformation data, in order to:
- Inspect rigid-body motions for any surface or component,
- Turn RBMs on or off,
- Plot system performance with and without RBMs,
- Convert component RBMs to Coordinate Breaks for further manipulation and analysis,
- And convert systems with RBMs to Nonsequential mode for further analysis on the new part locations.
We present a simple singlet lens example in detail in the articles that follow.
