Re: OptisWorks

Code V provides the export of wire frames and ray traces to IGES. These
can be placed on any layer determined by the user who can select
surfaces ranges and individual rays or bundles of rays for each layer.
The advantage of wire frames is that the solid object should be
developed parametrically within the CAD tool and the wireframes are
great for developing sketch relations that will in turn drive the solid
definition. This requires a little more intervention but ensures better
accuracy (especially with aspheric and complex systems) in the
mechanical model and makes the solids parametric as opposed to "dumb"
(ie fixed) objects.

I would never rely entirely on the Optics design program to deliver
100% accurate CAD models 100% of the time. That's because the CAD
export feature is just that, a feature. None of the optical design
programs interface well with any of the mechanical CAD programs which
has been a subject of interest of mine for quite a long time. None of
the optics design vendors believe that an accurate and bi-directional
interface would increase their sales and it is quite expensive to
implement and test this code. So none of them really provide more than
a way to visualize the optical layout in CAD. Code V does a very good
job for the accuracy of coordinate geometry given by the wireframes
(incuding aspheres, folds and diffraction elements), but their choice
of only wireframes makes it quite clear that a solid model will require
more attention to the optical model than they are willing to provide or
support. Personally. I would be very skeptical of relying upon solids
exported in IGES by any optical design program, especially Zemax.

Just my $0.02

James Carter
http://www.jacarter3.com
http://www.opticalconsulting.com


Alexander Dräbenstedt wrote:
> snip
>
> > I've used I-DEAS since 1994 and SolidWorks since 1999
> > for optomechanical design. Typically, I receive an IGES,
> > STEP or Parasolid file of the optical elements
> > constrained in space, and then fit mechanical parts to
> > them.
>
> I heard mechanical designers complain about the STEP/ IGES files exported
> from Zemax as all lenses being only one object with light beams being even
> the same object. Can there be something done about that without exporting
> every lens in a seperate file?
>
> Alexander

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