One extremely useful Windows feature is the clipboard.  The clipboard is a “holding area” for graphics and text.  The advantage to using the clipboard is that virtually all Windows programs can either import or export to the clipboard.  To get a ZEMAX graphic into the clipboard, you may select Window > Copy Clipboard from the menu of the displayed graphic window.  Alternatively, you may press Ctrl + C in the active window.  Nothing will appear to happen as the data transfer is extremely fast.  However, the data is available to other applications.

Not only is copying to the clipboard quick and easy, but metafiles are used to copy graphics to the clipboard, which means Windows uses the vector representation to draw this graphic when pasted or imported into other Windows programs. 

Newer, 32 bit applications use the “32 Bit Enhanced” format.  When a 32 bit format is used, the extension is EMF, for Enhanced Metafile Format.  Either of these formats can be used, and may be chosen from the Graphics tab of the File > Preferences dialog:



Another way of getting ZEMAX graphics into other applications is to perform a screen capture which creates a BitMap image of either the entire screen or any single window.  To capture the entire screen as a BitMap image, press Ctrl + Print Screen on the keyboard.  To capture a single window, select that window and pres Alt + Print Screen.  Once the screen Bitmap has been captured, the image can typically be pasted into other applications via Ctrl + V or Edit > Paste.