Mark Nicholson
Mark is Vice President, Operations at ZEMAX Development Corporation. Prior to this, he was Technical Director of Optima Research. Prior to that is just too far back in time ;-)
Mark earned a B.Sc. in Physics and a Ph.D. in Optical Physics at Imperial College, London.
Mark earned a B.Sc. in Physics and a Ph.D. in Optical Physics at Imperial College, London.
Articles by this Author
Upgrading from Older Versions of ZEMAX
- By Mark Nicholson
- Published 3 February 2010
- Installation and Troubleshooting
-
Rating:




This article discusses changes in the ZEMAX installer that will affect anyone upgrading from a version older than 12 Octover 2009
This article is also available in Japanese.
How to Use the ZEMAX Black Box Surface
- By Mark Nicholson
- Published 3 February 2010
- System Modeling
-
Rating:




The ZEMAX Black Box surface solves the problem of how to share optical design data without revealing design secrets. This article explains how to export part or all of an optical design as a ZEMAX Black Box surface, and how to use that surface in subsequent optical design, optimization and analysis.
Is My Key Under Current Support?
- By Mark Nicholson
- Published 11 November 2009
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Unrated
The article explains how to tell if your key is currently eligible for technical support and upgrades to the software.
Sentinel Keyserver Crashes When LabView is also Installed
- By Mark Nicholson
- Published 6 November 2009
- Installation and Troubleshooting
- Unrated
A problem can sometimes arise when the standalone USB key is use on a machine with LabView and other National Instruments programs installed, as both programs try to use port 6001. This article explains how to fix this problem.
How to Use ZEMAX with the EC2 Cloud Computing Service
- By Mark Nicholson
- Published 3 November 2009
- Installation and Troubleshooting
- Unrated
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. This article describes some early tests using ZEMAX with the EC2 and gives performance metrics.
What is the Normalization Radius?
- By Mark Nicholson
- Published 16 October 2009
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Unrated
Question: What is the normalization radius used by diffractive surfaces for?
What is The Birefringent Mode Flag For?
- By Mark Nicholson
- Published 16 October 2009
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Unrated
Question: ZEMAX supports four birefringent mode flags on the Birefringent_In surface. What are they for, and when do I use them?
What Computer Should I Buy to Run ZEMAX?
- By Mark Nicholson
- Published 12 October 2009
- Frequently Asked Questions
-
Rating:




Updated October 2009. This article explains how to choose a workstation for running ZEMAX on. It concentrates on:
- Choice of Processors and Operating Systems
- Amount of Memory
- Graphics Card
- Some other Frequently Asked Questions about computers
How is Ln Different to Hn?
- By Mark Nicholson
- Published 25 September 2009
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Unrated
Question; ZEMAX supports both the Hn and Ln filter strings. How are these different, and when should I use one over the other?
How to use POP with Lenslet Arrays
- By Mark Nicholson
- Published 31 July 2009
- Physical Optics
-
Rating:




This article explains how to configure the Physical Optics Propagation calculation to account for propagation through a lenslet array. It also gives some useful setup information when using POP in tricky systems.
