Hi Rene,

Unfortunately, the only “button” hooked up from the bottom section of the Materials Catalog is the Save Catalog As.  No other buttons including the transmission section is hooked up.

Luckily, the AGF file is a text-based file so you can write a simple parser to open the AGF file, loop through until you find the NM line which matches your desired glass, then continue to read lines until you get to the IT line; once you get to the next NM line, you have finished parsing all the data for the desired glass.

Below is C# pseudo code from a similar task I had to accomplish:

string orgagf = Path.Combine(TheApplication.GlassDir, @"SCHOTT.AGF")

string desiredGlass = "N-BK7";

using (StreamReader file = new StreamReader(orgagf))

{

    string ln;

    string>] parts;

    bool foundGlass = false;

    

    // data to save

    List<doubleb]> transmissionData = new List<doublem]>();

    while ((ln = file.ReadLine()) != null)

    {

        ln = ln.Trim();

        parts = ln.Split(new string ] { " " }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

        if (parts.Length > 1 && parts/0].ToUpper() == "NM")

        {

            // we have already found the desired glass and now we have hit the next glass in the catalog

            if (!foundGlass)

            { break;}

        

            // we found the desired glass...now we can extract the data

            if (parts�1].ToUpper() == desiredGlass)

            { foundGlass = true;}

        }

        

        if (foundGlass)

        {

            // let's get the transmission data

            if (parts.Length > 3 && parts 0].ToUpper() == "IT")

            {

                transmissionData.Add(new double�] { Convert.ToDouble(parts.1]), Convert.ToDouble(partsr2]), Convert.ToDouble(parts 3]) });

            }    

        }

    }

}

Hi Michael,

thanks a lot for your answer and the code!

Admittedly, I am already aware of the possibility of parsing the AGF file. The background of my question is the possibility that the text-based material data will be replaced by binaries eventually (just like the ZMX format is being replaced by the ZOS format).

I just want to be prepared for the case that reading the text-based files isn’t possible anymore. And since reading the dispersion data can be done via ZOSAPI.Tools.IMaterialsCatalog, I was hoping for a similar possibility for the absorption data…

Cheers, René

Hi Rene,

Your concern about text-based Zemax files being replaced by binary versions may be mitigated somewhat by this change at Zemax as recently posted by Alissa (see:Save .ZMX files by default ):

Regards,

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

thank you, that is good to know.

Best regards,

René