ZEMAX Users' Knowledge Base - Articles - System Modeling

How to Use the Find Best Asphere Tool

no@spam.com (Mark Nicholson) — Fri, 02 May 2008 11:00:00 PDT

This article describes a fast method to identify which surfaces in a design will best benefit from aspherization.

How to Use the Zernike Sag Surface to Model an All-Reflective System

no@spam.com (Mark Nicholson) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:00:00 PDT

This is a companion article to How To Model a 'Black-Box' Optical System Using Zernike Coefficients, and discusses the special case of an all-reflective design. This uses a Zernike Sag surface, instead of a Zernike Phase surface. The benefit is that the resulting system models the original all-reflective system at all wavelengths for a given field point.

How To Model a 'Black-Box' Optical System Using Zernike Coefficients

no@spam.com (Mark Nicholson) — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 00:00:00 PDT

It is often required to represent an optical system in a design even though you do not have detailed prescription data like radii of curvature, glasses etc. This article shows how to use Zernike coefficients to describe the wavefront aberrations of a system and produce a simple but accurate 'black box' representation of an optical system.

How To Model Corner-Cube Retroreflectors

no@spam.com (Mark Nicholson) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:00:00 PDT

Corner Cube retroreflectors are commonly used in a wide range of optical systems. This article describes various different ways in which these components can be modeled in ZEMAX. The treatment can be as detailed as the user needs, with effects due to face misalignment, roofline straddling, thin-film coatings, diffraction etc included as required.

ZEMAX Models of the Human Eye

no@spam.com (Rod Watkins) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 00:00:00 PDT

There have been literally dozens of eye models published over more than 150 years, from very simple “reduced” eyes consisting of a single refracting surface to very complex models with more than 4,000 refracting surfaces. This article presents several sequential and non-sequential models of the human eye in ZEMAX format, with glass catalog data.

How to Model the Human Eye in ZEMAX

no@spam.com (Mike Tocci) — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 00:00:00 PDT

In this article, we will create model of a human eye in ZEMAX using the Liou & Brennan 1997 eye model. After successfully generating this eye model in ZEMAX, we will use it to design a free-form progressive eyeglass lens.

How To Use ZEMAX as an Aid in Measuring the Internal Errors of a Molded Plastic Lens

no@spam.com (Reid Greenberg) — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 00:00:00 PST

This articles describes a joint experimental/computational method for measuring lens decentration and other errors in molded plastic otics

How to Design a Gaussian to Top-Hat Beam Shaper

no@spam.com (Nam-Hyong Kim) — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 00:00:00 PDT

This article demonstrates how to design a simple refractive beam shaper that converts a Gaussian intensity profile into a top-hat profile. Sample files are provided, which can be downloaded from the last page of this article.

How to Design Progressive Lenses

no@spam.com (Mark Nicholson) — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 00:00:00 PDT

Progressive lenses are an important example of the more general topic of free-form optical design. In free-form design, surfaces are not simple parametric functions like conic asphere or even asphere, but are instead free to take whatever shape is required to add optical power and aberration control wherever it is needed.

Such surfaces require analysis features and optimization controls that conventional optical designs do not. This article uses a progressive addition lens as an example of the techniques involved.

This article is also available in Japanese.

The Mars Rover Camera Lenses

no@spam.com (Gregory Hallock Smith) — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 00:00:00 PDT

This article is an excerpt from Gregory Hallock Smith's book, Camera Lenses: From Box Camera to Digital. The excerpt is Chapter 31 in its entirity. Chapter 31 of Smith's book discusses the cameras aboard the Mars Exploration Rovers, the lenses of which were designed using ZEMAX by the author. This article also includes links to several fascinating pictures taken aboard these "robotic geologists."

Attached to the last page of the article are the original ZEMAX files of the four types of Mars Rover lenses: the PanCams, NavCams, HazCams, and the Microscopic Imager.