Hi Léo,

In ZPL, the Z Position of a non-sequential object can be modified with the SETNSCPOSITION keyword. Reading the power requires you to clear the detectors with the numeric function NSDD, run a raytrace with NSTR, and retrieve the power with NSDD again. You can create a loop to iterate through various Z Position with the keywords FOR, NEXT. I have made a dummy example for you (attached to this post).

The system is a divergent Source Ellipse followed by a Detector Rectangle.

The macro is as follow:

# Detector number
detector = 2

# Minimum Z position
z_min = 5.0

# Maximum Z position
z_max = 10.0

# Z range
z_range = z_max - z_min

# Number of samples
samples = 10

# Z step size
z_step = z_range / ( samples - 1 )

# Z position array
DECLARE z_position, DOUBLE, 1, samples

# Total flux array
DECLARE flux, DOUBLE, 1, samples

# Loop over the different Z positions
FOR z_indx, 0, samples-1, 1
    # Calculate new Z position
    z_pos = z_indx * z_step + z_min
    z_position(z_indx+1) = z_pos
    
    # Update detector Z position
    SETNSCPOSITION 1, detector, 3, z_pos
    
    # Clear detectors
    clear = NSDD(1, -detector, 1, 1)
    
    # Raytrace
    NSTR 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0
    
    # Total power
    flux(z_indx+1) = NSDD(1, detector, 0, 0)
NEXT

# Plot
PLOT NEW
PLOT TITLEX, "Z Position"
PLOT TITLEY, "Total Flux"
PLOT FORMATX, "%2.1f"
PLOT DATA, z_position, flux, samples, 1, 0, 0
PLOT GO

It outputs the following graph result:

With my comments and the Help File (F1), I hope you’ll be able to make sense of it. You don’t need to plot the data, but I thought I might as well show you.

Let me know if you have questions about the code and take care,

David

Thank you very much for your answer. Your explanation is very clear.

 I have one more question. You assume that the distance between 2 points is regular, but in my case it is not.

My "Z" list is like : Z_position = 50 , 250 , 500 , 1000 , 1500 , 2000 , ... , 10000 , 11000 , 13000 , 15000 , ..., 40000].

I would like to know if it is possible to create such a list.

Hi Léo,

In case the list is completely irregular, I would create an array beforehand and retrieve the Z positions from that array, in the loop. Something like:

# Number of Z positions
samples = 4

# Array of Z positions
DECLARE z_positions, DOUBLE, 1, samples
z_positions(1) = 50
z_positions(2) = 250
z_positions(3) = 500
z_positions(4) = 1000

# Print Z positions for sanity check
FOR z_indx, 1, samples, 1
    PRINT z_positions(z_indx)
NEXT

Which should return:

50.0000
250.0000
500.0000
1000.0000

I leave it to you to adapte the previous code with this technique. Let me know if this answers your question.

Take care,

David

Hi David,

Thank you so much for your help !

Hi David,

I tried to do something similar. I want to change the x position with ZPL, and I want to save the detector image data for each time x position is changed. How do i modified your code to save the all detector data?

thanks,

lea

Hi Lea,

You probably figured it out already, but for everyone’s refernce, to change the X Position, you can keep using SETNSCPOSITION. However, this time, you would use 1 as the third parameter (1: X Position, 2: Y Position, 3: Z Position, 4: X Tilt, 5: Y Tilt, 6 Z Tilt).

As for the detector image data, it really depends what you want to save. Since I’m not sure what you mean by

all detector data

I will assume that you are referring to all the pixel values of your detector (basically, an image). There are two common ways to go about this.

The easiest way is perhaps to use the SAVEDETECTOR keyword:

SAVEDETECTOR 1, <your_detector_number>, <filename>

The first parameter is the surface number for hybrid systems, for pure non-sequential systems, just use 1. Then, the second parameter is your detector number, and finally, the last parameter is a file name with or without a path (without path means the file is saved where the lens file is). Please note the following from the Help File (F1):

The extension should be DDR, DDC, DDP, or DDV for Detector Rectangle, Color, Polar, and Volume objects, respectively

Later, you can use the keyword LOADDETECTOR for display.

Alternatively, you can use the GETTEXTFILE keyword:

GETTEXTFILE <full_path>, DVR

In this case, you need to specify the full path to a text file. This keyword will not use a specific detector, instead it will use the default detector settings (if you want to modify the detector settings, have a look at this thread). The advantage of this technique is that you have the data in a text format that is easily parsed with MATLAB or Python for further analysis.

Hope this helps.

Take care,

David

Hi David,

Thanks for the help. I am able to use GETTEXTFILE to save the detectors text file. But I only want to save the pixel values not the whole text file. How do I do that?

Hi Lea,

It depends what you want to do really.

If you want to stick with OpticStudio only. The NSDD operand can retrieve a single pixel value. Then, you should loop over the number of pixels to retrieve all the pixel values. But, I  personnally don’t find this approach elegant.

The other solution I would rather opt for is to parse the saved text-file with Python/MATLAB. In this way, it is rather easy to remove the header of the text file, if that’s your problem, for example.

Can you let us know what you intend to do with those pixel values and I can try to come up with a more specific answer?

Take care,

David