Making use of Lens Data Editor, the user may specify parameters defining the whole component such as the number of slices and their dimensions in both X- and Y-directions (Fig.2). Furthermore, three additional parameters are introduced as following (Fig.3):

•  Active slice? defines which slice is considered in the paraxial calculation providing pupil location, magnification, effective focal length, etc.
•  Centered? acts as a decenter of the complete surface: the optical axis may be centered on the first slice or on the entire surface of the slicer array. This parameter allows to avoid error due to the possible lack of chief ray data in the case of the number of slice is even.
• Iter. defines the number of iterations used to compute which slice is struck by each ray. This parameter could be useful if the step between two consecutive slices is large and/or if rays come from high angles of incidence.

Figure 3 – Lens Data Editor. The slicer.dll appears line 3 and 6.

From the Extra-Data Editor (Fig.4), the user may specify parameters defining each slice individually such as curvature, tilts in both directions (Tilt-X and Tilt-Y) and decenter along the optical axis (Z-Dec). Note that the parameter Z-Dec does not affect the whole surface but only shifts each slice's vertex along the current optical axis.

Figure 4 – Extra-Data Editor. The slicer.dll appears line 3 and 6.

The slicer.dll uses four parameters to describe each slice that leads to 60 slices maximum since the Extra-Data Editor only has 242 allocations available. Furthermore, bear in mind that the curvature is defined in the Extra-Data Editor and that only flat and spherical surfaces are considered. Thus allocations initially used by Zemax to specify the curvature and the conic constant in the Lens Data Editor are not used.