Has anyone played around with optics software?

[loccdor]

I have some interest in playing around with software that lets you construct/arrange lenses to improve my understanding of the topic. Has anyone here tried that and might have some software to recommend?

 

[Chan Tran]

I don't have any such software.

 

[koraks]

Has anyone here tried that and might have some software to recommend?

OSN: WinLens3D Basic - free lens design software - optical design, zoom, raytrace, lens, prism, mirror, aspherics, tilt & decenter, solid model, autofocus, glass map, gaussian beam

WinLens3D Basic: lens design software. Free version of the WinLens3D optical design package, which provides serious design and analysis tools for optical engineer, student or designer.

www.opticalsoftware.net

I've only looked into it briefly, some time ago, but never really pushed through. Well, not yet in any case.

 

[bernard_L]

For a short project (time limit) this might be worth a look. A student version of a classic package.

Ansys Zemax OpticStudio Student | Free Software Download

Ansys Zemax OpticStudio Student: Free access for students to design and analyze optical systems, gain skills for future careers in optics.

www.ansys.com

More generally, before investing your time in the learning curve of a "free" (as in free beer) package check ahead the limitations:

• number of surfaces
• save a session?
• time limit
• is there an optimizer?

 

[Mr Bill]

I have some interest in playing around with software that lets you construct/arrange lenses to improve my understanding of the topic. Has anyone here tried that and might have some software to recommend?

About 20-some years back I sorta dredged into this sort of thing; we had some "needs" at the outfit where I worked. I kinda discovered that in photographic-type optics it seems to function at two different levels, with little in between. The first level is where photographers might operate - "here is a focal length" and "here is how to calculate lens extension," and that sort of thing. Maybe working with "index of refraction" and that sort of thing.

The second level of these things, in my view, is in actual lens design, where it turns out that everything in the "first level" was an approximation. For example, if you buy a single lens element from an optical house it will probably be spec'd with a focal length and perhaps refractive index, etc. But... it turns out that the "focal length" was only for what they call "paraxial rays," a narrow zone close to the lens axis. And the refractive index is only for one specific "color" of light (for each other color the index varies slightly). So when using lens design software you have to spec out both a "glass type" and radius of spherical surfaces, etc., for each lens element. The given glass type probably comes from a glass makers catalog, where the pertinent characteristics are known, and the lens design software utilizes this info. During the process of modern lens design it's normal to have the software optimize the design, using constraints that you give it. So you need some level of knowledge to be able to direct it.

Looking at some of your (OP) posts, my guess is that the lens design software will be a bit over your head, and not very useful to you. But if you wanna give it a shot I'd concur with Bernard on Zemax. It may well "time out" before you become knowledgeable enough to really use it.

I personally started out with a handful of optical books (not cheap). The one I found most useful, by far, was Warren J Smith's Modern Optical Engineering, which can now be found fairly cheaply. But, different people learn differently, so I'd suggest first having a look at a library copy.

 

[loccdor]

Thank you all very much for the input, I'll have a look.

Being a programmer, sometimes I will embark on a coding project in order to learn something: a 3d engine to understand some geometry/trigonometry/perspective, a gravity simulator to understand orbits, etc. I thought about doing something similar for optics but it's always good to have a look at how the tools already made are handling things first. We touched on optics briefly in physics, I'd always wished we'd gone deeper and especially into practical applications.

 

[imgprojts]

I've been using freecad to make geometry and blender.org to preview imaging in cycles and to plot beam sizes in luxcore. I keep switching from luxcore to cycles. Zemax is great for use at work where your boss can pay an arm and a leg. But for home use zemax is just another worthless pos that's keeping you from fully going to Linux. Unless you can find a dubiously licensed version of it.

 

[reddesert]

The mathematics of ray tracing a lens to calculate the aberrations and so on rapidly become complicated, even for a one-or-few lens system, even with simplifying assumptions like the paraxial assumption, and so on. It's not that the math is graduate level or non-algebraic, just that you quickly wind up with polynomial equations that don't have closed form solutions. So a lot of the art of lens design is figuring out where to start and what simplifications or perturbations to make. This is still true even for professional optics designers using Zemax or Code V - they can give the software a candidate design and have it optimize the surfaces, but it doesn't design the system for them.

I second the recommendation for Warren Smith's "Modern Optical Engineering." (I'm a user of optical systems, not a designer, so I can more or less follow a lot of the book, but I would have to do some real work to work out any of the examples in full detail myself.) Another book at a similar level is Rudolph Kingslake's "Lens Design Fundamentals."

Of course, optical scientists designed lenses before there was specialized software, and an interesting look into those calculations is at Pencil of Rays: https://www.pencilofrays.com/lens-design-spreadsheet/

A free Java application that will allow you to set up a lens system and trace rays through it is Optical Ray Tracer: https://arachnoid.com/OpticalRayTracer/

 

[Mr Bill]

I second the recommendation for Warren Smith's "Modern Optical Engineering." (I'm a user of optical systems, not a designer, so I can more or less follow a lot of the book, but I would have to do some real work to work out any of the examples in full detail myself.) Another book at a similar level is Rudolph Kingslake's "Lens Design Fundamentals."

Thanks for "seconding" Warren Smith. Regarding Kinglake's book, I personally find/found it much more difficult. I actually started out with it and pretty quickly found myself under water, so to speak. So I went on to get the two preceeding books, by Conrady (who became Kingslake's father in law). (Kingslake's book is sorta considered as a 3rd book in the series.) To me, it's a long hard slog which I wasn't willing to fully commit to. Essentially the series is about designing lenses in the day when calculations were done by hand, frequently looking up log tables. Consequently calculation methods were as elegant and economical as possible, etc., using various shortcuts and minimizing the number of rays traced. So if one wants to learn the older ways, pre-personal-computer, these are your books. As a note, I believe that Kingslake's book was later updated, after his death, so perhaps the later edition is easier to follow? I dunno.

FWIW I am really not very good on the math. Nor have I had any formal training in optics. Someone who is very fluent in this sort of thing might breeze right through this.

For me, Warren Smith's book speaks in a manner that I can sorta visualize, which works better for me. Things are explained more through words than through formulas.

Of course, optical scientists designed lenses before there was specialized software, and an interesting look into those calculations is at Pencil of Rays: https://www.pencilofrays.com/lens-design-spreadsheet/

Thanks for this link, I got immersed in it for a half hour or so before coming back to finish this post. (It's my idea of fun reading.)

Ps, like you I've been primarily a user of lenses, but have done some relatively crude designs which we actually used in our studio chain - several thousand copies of each. So every one there thought I was an optical expert when it was really just a bit more than THEY understood.

FWIW another cute little book, Walter Welford's Useful Optics, is compact and concise. Apparently a number of students can study theory but be a bit weak when it comes to actually rigging up a working optical system. So he cuts right to the chase. It certainly helped me in clarification of certain points. But I don't think it's a good beginner book.