At this year’s Photonics West, Zemax Founder and Technical Fellow Ken Moore introduced high-yield optimization as a fast, efficient method for improving as-built optical designs. High-yield optimization will be released later this year.

Design has been a two-step process, until now.

Traditionally, lenses are designed for best nominal performance—the best RMS spot radius, Wavefront, and MTF. These designs are subject to system specifications and boundary constraints.

Tolerances are considered as a separate step, adding to nominal prescription parameters. Predicted performance comes from statistical analysis of tolerances, and actual built systems are slight variations on the nominal design.

Would integrating these steps improve designs? 

At Photonics West, Ken introduced a new proposed method for better design of optical systems by integrating ray angles into the design process using high-yield (HYLD) optimization. He walked through several examples that illustrate how HYLD produces radically different design forms from best nominal forms—effectively maximizing as-built performance rather than nominal performance that ignores manufacturing defects.