Located under the Libraries Tab…Material Tools is the Glass Compare tool.

This tool allows you to choose a reference glass catalog (the primary catalog) and it will select the closest equivalent glass from one or two other catalogs for each entry for materials used in the visible range. The user chooses the tolerance on the refractive index (nd) and the Abbe number (Vd) that defines the maximum allowable deviation from the characteristics of the primary material.

Once run, you will see columns for each of the glass catalogs that allows for the quick comparison of what glasses can be easily substituted by one from another catalog. Each entry also includes a flag indicating the status of each glass type (Standard, Preferred, Obsolete, Special, or Melt), which may be particularly helpful if you are trying to find glass substitutes that are more common to reduce costs.