Hey Mike,

The code is a little bit verbose with a ZPL, but the concept is as follows:

• Determine all the loaded Glass Catalogs in the correct order that are for the current system
• Loop through all the new materials (NM) defined for the specific catalog
• Once the iterator hits the desired glass number, return the glass name and exit the loop

desired_glass_number = 27

! get all the loaded catalogs
dummy = SYPR(23)
catalogs$ = $BUFFER()
glasscat_dir$ = $DATAPATH() + "\Glasscat\"

! determine the number of loaded catalogs by counting the white spaces
! NOTE: there is always a space after a catalog, even if there is only 1 loaded
num_catalogs = 0
FOR i = 1, SLEN(catalogs$), 1
	tmp$ = $LEFTSTRING(catalogs$, i)
	tmp$ = $RIGHTSTRING(tmp$, 1)
	IF tmp$ $== " " THEN num_catalogs = num_catalogs + 1
NEXT

! loop through the catalogs in order and look for valid glass names
glass_num = 0
FOR i = 1, num_catalogs, 1
	catalog$ = $GETSTRING(catalogs$, i)
	catalog_file$ = glasscat_dir$ + catalog$ + ".AGF"

	! check to make sure the file exits
	filter$ = catalog_file$
	FINDFILE tmp$, filter$
	IF (SLEN(tmp$))
		OPEN catalog_file$
			LABEL BOF
			READSTRING line$
			IF (EOFF()) THEN GOTO EOF

			! check if the line is a new material
			! ideally we would trim the string to remove whitespaces
			marker$ = $LEFTSTRING(line$, 2)

			! ideally we would convert all letters to uppercase but we'll assume NM is uppercase
			IF (marker$ $== "NM")
				glass_num = glass_num + 1
				glass_name$ = $GETSTRING(line$, 2)

				! check the glass_num
				IF glass_num == desired_glass_number
					PRINT "Glass Number ", $STR(glass_num), " is for ", glass_name$, " material"

					! let's verify this is the true
					PRINT "VERIFY ", GNUM(glass_name$)

					GOTO EOF
				ENDIF


			ENDIF
			GOTO BOF
			LABEL EOF
		CLOSE
	ENDIF
NEXT

Thanks Michael, I’ll give this a try.

Of course, a ZPL string function $NUMGLASS(i) where “i” is the glass number in a catalog would do this in one line, if it existed.  But we all know that Zemax is 100% nonresponsive to any customer requests, so that will never happen.  I/we all wish that Zemax could be as responsive as you have been.  Thanks, Mike

Hi Mike, this depends on how you define “Zemax”. Lots of feature requests have been created during the technical support activities.