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.

This article is also available in Japanese.

It is often required to represent an optical system in a design even though you do not have detailed prescription data like radii of curvature, glasses etc. This article shows how to use Zernike coefficients to describe the wavefront aberrations of a system and produce a simple but accurate representation of an optical system if a ZEMAX Black Box Surface file cannot be used. This is typically the case if you are relying on experimental data measured using the optical system, but its prescription data is not available to you.

This article is also available in Japanese.

This article explains how to model an off-axis parabolic mirror when the source is a finite distance away from the mirror.

This article describes an easy way to test whether a double-pass lens file is correctly set up, or not, and to identify where any errors are.

This article describes how to use the Image Simulation analysis tool to produce photorealistic images of object scenes including the effects of diffraction, aberrations, distortion, relative illumination, image orientation and polarization.

This is a companion article to How To Model a 'Black-Box' Optical System Using Zernike Coefficients, and discusses the special case of an all-reflective design. This uses a Zernike Sag surface, instead of a Zernike Phase surface. The benefit is that the resulting system models the original all-reflective system at all wavelengths for a given field point.

Corner Cube retroreflectors are commonly used in a wide range of optical systems. This article describes various different ways in which these components can be modeled in ZEMAX. The treatment can be as detailed as the user needs, with effects due to face misalignment, roofline straddling, thin-film coatings, diffraction etc included as required.

There have been literally dozens of eye models published over more than 150 years, from very simple “reduced” eyes consisting of a single refracting surface to very complex models with more than 4,000 refracting surfaces. This article presents several sequential and non-sequential models of the human eye in ZEMAX format, with glass catalog data.

In this article, we will create model of a human eye in ZEMAX using the Liou & Brennan 1997 eye model. After successfully generating this eye model in ZEMAX, we will use it to design a free-form progressive eyeglass lens.

This article demonstrates how to design a simple refractive beam shaper that converts a Gaussian intensity profile into a top-hat profile. Sample files are provided, which can be downloaded from the last page of this article.