As announced today by Laser Focus World, the High-Yield Optimization capability in OpticStudio is bringing home the gold. We’re honored to accept a Gold award in the 2019 Innovators Awards Program which recognizes an excellent innovation that “makes a substantial improvement over previous methods employed, approaches taken, or products/systems used.”

Honorees were announced this morning via a virtual event, and results are listed in Laser Focus World's November issue as well as on the website.

“We’re thrilled to be among this prestigious list of innovators in the photonics and optoelectronics industry,” said Zemax CEO S. Subbiah. “High-Yield Optimization helps engineers build higher performance optical systems and reduce manufacturing costs, so we’re proud to see it recognized by this top awards program.” 

About High-Yield Optimization

As the requirements for high performance optical systems become more and more demanding, it is increasingly important that every stage of the optical design process is optimized to ensure that manufactured systems meet specification. Introduced with OpticStudio 19.8 subscription licenses, High-Yield Optimization is a fast, efficient method for improving as-built optical designs. 

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.

High-Yield Optimization produces radically different design forms from best nominal forms that ignore manufacturing defects. By bringing the effects of tolerance defects into the optimization step, High-Yield Optimization helps engineers build systems with higher as-built performance at a lower cost.