Clip 1: PreDesigner: an introduction...

PreDesigner is for those learning lens design and for all optical engineers. It is useful at the beginning of a lens design project, when some basic optical requirements are known, and you want to find the unknown parameters of the lens and the system layout details, such as lengths, heights and magnification.

This clip shows how to use PreDesigner to answer your ‘what if’ questions and some of the other nice features within it.

Clip 2: PreDesigner: extra features...

We discuss some further features in PreDesigner:

  • Using the list of standard detector formats
  • The advanced tab [principle plane separation, different refractive indices for object/image space
  • Mirror mode for analysing simple mirror layouts
  • Depth of focus & field calculations
  • Symbols - how to enter your own values

 

Clip 3: WinLens3D - Paraxial and Seidel Analysis...

The key to understanding lens design starts with the paraxial and seidels analysis

We discuss the tools that help this process:
- lens drawing: paraxial rays, cardinal points
- paraxial system tables - showing cardinal point values for the system
- paraxial data table - showing cardinal point values for each surface, element or component
- paraxial raytrace data
- Seidel analysis table [total and surface by surface] -m including child table showing equivalent real world aberration values
[these tables can be set to display values for the mid design wavelength, or any of the others [including differences between 2 wavelengths]]
- y-ybar diagram
- Seidel barchart - show Siedels contributions, surface by surface or cumulatively.  The user can elect which to show, along with design and paraxial raytrace values

Finally we mention how to use some tools such as sliders and the interactive glass map to change lens data values

Clip 4: WinLens3D - Chief Ray Analysis Graphs...

This clip describes the field aberration plot, and its meaning.

The field aberrations (astigmatism, distortion and lateral colour) are obtained by tracing a set of chief rays spaced along the Y axis.

We discuss what these aberrations mean and notew that they are independent of the aperture size.  We show a correlation between the astigmatism values and the behaviour of the spot diagrams, and look at the full field distortion plot

The clip ends with showing how to obtain a child table of the numerical values for these plots

Clip 5: WinLens3D - Ray Fan Analysis Graphs...

This clip describes ray fans and how they are used in lens analysis.

Having defined a ray fan we look at various plots
- Transverse ray aberrations [TRA]
- Optical path differences [OPD]
- Longitudinal aberrations
- Offence against the Sine condition/Isoplanetism
and see how they show the ray fans anslysis in different ways

Clip 6: WinLens3D - interactive glass map - an introduction...

This clip shows some highly useful features of the interactive glass map in WinLens3D:

  • display location of glasses in current system on the glass map
  • change a system glass by clicking on the glass map
  • colour code glasses with glass properties
  • customise axis definitions
  • use the ‘history’ log for instant recall of different colour codings, search results etc

The WinLens glass map is transformed from the old static maps in the paper catalogs into an intuitive design aid.

Clip 7: What is Tolerancing...

This is a basic introduction to tolerancing as a subject - it summarises what is covered in the WinLens Tolerancer manual.

For the optical engineer there are five key questions that need to be answered when converting a paper design into a successful product.

  • What are the errors that can happen in the manufacture of this design
  • What are the performance effects of those errors individually
  • What limits [tolerances] do I need to place on those errors
  • What will happen when I make a batch of lenses to those tolerances
  • How can I get the glass shop and machine shop to follow those tolerances

We discuss these very briefly!