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- How to Create a New Glass Catalog
How to Create a New Glass Catalog
- By Mark Nicholson
- Published 6 May 2008
- Glass and Refractive Index
- Unrated
Adding Glasses to Your Catalog
Run ZEMAX, and click on Tools...Catalogs...Glass Catalog and select MyCatalog.agf:
This window shows the data for the currently selected glass (there is no glass inside the catalog yet). The data can be separated into useful sections:
1. Refractive Index Data. Dispersion data is entered via dispersion formulae (Schott, Sellmeier, Conrady etc). If you have raw index data, ZEMAX can fit this to the various formulae for you. Just press the Fit Index Data button to enter index versus wavelength data and have ZEMAX fit it, or use the Glass Fitting tool. See the separate article Fitting Index Data for full details. If you do not use the fitting tools, you must enter the minimum and maximum wavelengths of operation of the glass by hand.
2. Thermal Variation data. ZEMAX can compute the refractive index at temperatures different to the reference temperature. The data values D0, D1, D2, E0, E1, Ltk and TCE are used by the thermal model. The glass fitting tool will take data at multiple temperatures and produce not only a fit to the refractive datya but also a fit to the thermal data. See the article How ZEMAX Calculates Refractive Index At Arbitrary Temperatures and Pressures, and the Users Guide for full details.
3. Transmission data. Press the Transmission button to enter the internal transmission of the glass. This data should ignore surface reflections, and represents the absorption of the bulk material. (Surface reflections depend only on the index of the glasses, the angle and wavelength of the incoming ray, and the ray's polarization state, and are not affected by bulk absorption losses.)
4. Other data. You can tell ZEMAX 'non-optical' data, like relative cost, stain resistance, climate resistance etc. In addition you can also provide a comment for the glass itself. The 'Status' entry is usually Standard or Preferred for easily available materials. 'Special' is available to describe unusual materials, and 'Obsolete' should be used to represent glasses that are no longer available (glasses should never be deleted once entered, as this would render designs that use that data useless). The status flag 'Melt' should normally only be used by ZEMAX's Melt Data fitting tool, although it can be used by hand if desired.
After entry, the glass catalog window will look like so:
There may be multiple glasses inside the catalog, and the data displayed represents whatever glass is highlighted in the Glass control below the catalog name. It is a good idea to give the catalog itself a descriptive comment, and a date or version number.
This window shows the data for the currently selected glass (there is no glass inside the catalog yet). The data can be separated into useful sections:
1. Refractive Index Data. Dispersion data is entered via dispersion formulae (Schott, Sellmeier, Conrady etc). If you have raw index data, ZEMAX can fit this to the various formulae for you. Just press the Fit Index Data button to enter index versus wavelength data and have ZEMAX fit it, or use the Glass Fitting tool. See the separate article Fitting Index Data for full details. If you do not use the fitting tools, you must enter the minimum and maximum wavelengths of operation of the glass by hand.
2. Thermal Variation data. ZEMAX can compute the refractive index at temperatures different to the reference temperature. The data values D0, D1, D2, E0, E1, Ltk and TCE are used by the thermal model. The glass fitting tool will take data at multiple temperatures and produce not only a fit to the refractive datya but also a fit to the thermal data. See the article How ZEMAX Calculates Refractive Index At Arbitrary Temperatures and Pressures, and the Users Guide for full details.
3. Transmission data. Press the Transmission button to enter the internal transmission of the glass. This data should ignore surface reflections, and represents the absorption of the bulk material. (Surface reflections depend only on the index of the glasses, the angle and wavelength of the incoming ray, and the ray's polarization state, and are not affected by bulk absorption losses.)
4. Other data. You can tell ZEMAX 'non-optical' data, like relative cost, stain resistance, climate resistance etc. In addition you can also provide a comment for the glass itself. The 'Status' entry is usually Standard or Preferred for easily available materials. 'Special' is available to describe unusual materials, and 'Obsolete' should be used to represent glasses that are no longer available (glasses should never be deleted once entered, as this would render designs that use that data useless). The status flag 'Melt' should normally only be used by ZEMAX's Melt Data fitting tool, although it can be used by hand if desired.
After entry, the glass catalog window will look like so:
There may be multiple glasses inside the catalog, and the data displayed represents whatever glass is highlighted in the Glass control below the catalog name. It is a good idea to give the catalog itself a descriptive comment, and a date or version number.