The author attended last week's International Optical Design Conference (IODC) at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Amongst many papers presented, there were several that were notably important to the ZEMAX user. Please don't be offended if your paper is not mentioned here!

1. Brian Bauman's paper "Gaussian Quadrature on Non-Circular Pupils/Fields and Broad Wavelength Ranges" extends Gaussian Quadrature methods to obscured pupils and to wavelength ranges. The use of Gaussian Quadrature over wavelength range is very important for designers of visible and other broad-spectrum imaging devices. Best of all, a macro allows optimal wavelength weights to be calculated easily.

We'll be evaluating how to build this capability into ZEMAX for a future release, but for now Brian's IODC slides and ZEMAX macro is in the below ZIP file. Just copy the macro and associated 'prolateXX.txt' files into your /ZEMAX/Macro folder.

2. Jose Sasian presented an analytic 6th order wavefront calculation and associated ZEMAX macro. The macro can also be used from the merit function. Jose's treatment and macro are also in the attached zip file.

3. It because apparent to me that many (most?) users at IODC were not aware that ZEMAX includes the new 'Forbes aspheres' surfaces as user-defined surfaces. We'll probably add them into the main code at some point so that they appear under F for 'Forbes', but for now you can find them as follows:





Other things about aspheric optimization that seem to have slipped by without (some) users being aware is the BSDF operand that can be used to limit the deviation of an aspheric surface from a best-fit sphere, the FTGT and FTLT operands that can constrain the thickness of an asphere at all radial zones, and the Find Best Asphere tool.