This article explains:

• What the ZEMAX Programming Language (ZPL) is
• What ZPL is used for
• The differences between functions and keywords within ZPL

 

This article describes photorealistic rendering and the rendering software POV-Ray. It provides and explains a macro written to render ZEMAX lens files in POV-Ray. 

This article describes how to modeled a turreted lens system using the multi-configuration capabilities of ZEMAX. A number of IGNR operands are necessary for ignoring the turreted lens in one of the configurations, and are added with a ZPL macro.

Question: What is the best way to reference a surface or object in ZPL, so that the macro still works when surfaces/objects are inserted or deleted, and the numbering changes?

This article is also available in Japanese.

This article describes use of the PLOT2D keyword for generating graphical displays of 2D numerical data in ZEMAX. Examples are provided to demonstrate use of the keyword, and its application in creating through-focus PSF plots.

This article explains how to call a macro from within another macro, and how data are passed back and forth between macros.

The ZEMAX Programming Language (ZPL) supports a comprehensive PLOT keyword for making graphs of data arrays. This article shows some examples of how to use it.

One of the many benefits of ZPL macros is that they can be written in any text editor, such as Windows' own Notepad. However, macros are often a lot easier to read, understand and debug when the macro commands are highlighted, and programmer's text editors provide more powerful text editing features.

This article describes how to use two such programmer's editors with ZPL.

This article introduces a quick and simple macro that can be used to scale the weighting of a range of optimization operands.

This article described a brief ZPL code snippet written to save the author from some tedious keyboard data entry.