This tutorial has outlined the basic process of designing a lens, analyzing its performance, and optimizing under certain design contraints.  In summary:

  • Given certain design criteria, it is important to begin the design by entering in the appropriate system settings, such as Aperture Type, Wavelengths, Fields, and Lens Units.
  • Once system related settings are complete, the lens prescription data can be entered into the Lens Data Editor.  Educated guesses may be made to those unkown parameters to define a starting point for optimization.
  • Use solves to enforce design contraints if at all possible.
  • Prior to optimization, the system performance may be analyzed by any number of availalbe features in ZEMAX.
  • Determine the degrees of freedom and select the appropriate variables for optimization.
  • You may use the built in tools to create a default merit function.  Remember, the operands within the merit function define the goal which you are attempting to achieve by optimization.  The lower the merit function value, the closer you are to your target.
  • Once optimization is complete, ensure that the final design measures up to the inital contraints and requirements.  Otherwise, more optimization techniques may be required.

References

There were no external references used for this article.