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Natural Science Forum / Physics / Optics / October 2005OptisWorks
Hello all, Can someone here share his experiences or opinions about the OptisWorks program? http://www.optis-world.com/G_O.asp?soft_id=3 It is an extension to Solidworks and advertised to be a full featured optics design program. Its advantage is the full integration of optical elements in the mechanical design. Is it possible that this program, rather unknown in the community of optics designers can replace a special-purpose program like Zemax and the like? Thanks, Alexander Optisworks is an interesting program, but they're going to have to work on their pricing before they have any hopes of replacing Zemax--at $17k to $30k per seat for Optisworks, the boys at Zemax can sleep soundly > Hello all, > [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > > Thanks, Alexander > Hello all, > [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > Thanks, Alexander I don't have an opinion about OptisWorks, but (speaking as an optomechanical designer with 30+ years experience) I don't see the integration of optical design software with mechanical design software as a big advantage. The design sequence always seems to be the same: it is mostly a one-way process. Optical systems are driven mainly by optical and space considerations. Once the optical designer has a collection of optical elements floating in space, it's the job of the mechanical guy to hold everything together, maintain positional tolerances, athermalize, provide adjustments, etc. 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. Rarely, I need to request minor changes to the optics, such as flats or bevels to accept spacers, but never a change to the optical prescription. I'd look at optical design software on its own merits: capability, cost, quality of current support and probablilty of future support. AW 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 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 > snip > [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > > Alexander > 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? Exporting the iges file as an assembly with separate parts is a standard Zemax feature. It's just a matter of which checkboxes the optics designer selects when he does the export. > Exporting the iges file as an assembly with separate parts is a standard > Zemax feature. It's just a matter of which checkboxes the optics designer > selects when he does the export. And you should know that it doesn't work properly. Like many partially verified options in Zemax. doesn't work properly in what way? >> Exporting the iges file as an assembly with separate parts is a standard >> Zemax feature. It's just a matter of which checkboxes the optics [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > And you should know that it doesn't work properly. Like many partially > verified options in Zemax. > doesn't work properly in what way? > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > And you should know that it doesn't work properly. Like many partially > > verified options in Zemax. Doesn't always come through with correct dimentsions. Sometimes off by a few microns. Doesn't sound like much by it can really mess up a CAD model. > Doesn't always come through with correct dimentsions. Sometimes off by > a few microns. Doesn't sound like much by it can really mess up a CAD > model. ahh... that's iges, not zemax. If you really care about dimensional accuracy, then iges isn't a very good standard to use. Its not the fault of the IGES file standard which is set up to handle almost arbitrary precision so that at least double precision accuracy (15-16 significant digits) is quite possible. Its each vendors import/export to IGES where the accuracy bottleneck is. Normally, they provide an option for specifying a tolerance to use which is usually set by default to mechanical tolerances (mils) and not to something acceptable for optics (like sub-microns). Al Greynolds >Hello all, > [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > >Thanks, Alexander OptisWorks is well known in the world of optical illumination (as opposed to theatrical or general lighting). The price is high, but not that much higher than TracePro, ASAP or LightTools. I see the advantage of OptisWorks as being that mechanical designers can, with a little training, analyze illumination systems and do rudimentary designs. It also allows optical engineers who are familiar with SolidWorks to design illumination systems as a part of a mechanical assembly. Some of my colleagues have been very favorably impressed with OptisWorks. On the flip side, I don't see any advantage of OptisWorks for myself. I'm a TracePro and Zemax user, and don't know or want to learn SolidWorks. My company requires that we use Unigraphics or Pro/E, so the attachment to SolidWorks is a hindrance rather than a help. ACIS and STEP translation between TracePro and CAD works quite well. In comparison to Zemax, OptisWorks cannot be as efficient in lens design due to the CAD overhead, even if it does imaging analysis. (I don't know if it does or not.) As for the nonsequential part of Zemax, until Ken dumps the spreadsheet interface in favor of a CAD interface, it will be too awkward to be of much use. I assume he's only aiming at the extremely cost-sensitive part of the market. OptisWorks will not compete with him in this segment.  SignatureBest regards, Steve Eckhardt skeckhardt at mmm dot com I have found that ACIS file transfer to CAD works much better than IGES. It creates solid objects directly. I often export from Zemax to SolidWorks using the SAT export feature in Zemax. It lets you create a solid ray volume which can be quite useful in a CAD model when checking for mechanical beam clipping. I also use TracePro with the Zemax translator. ACIS export to SolidWorks from TracePro works very well. ACIS also works well going from SolidWorks to TracePro. Jonathan Scheuch >I have found that ACIS file transfer to CAD works much better than > IGES. It creates solid objects directly. I often export from Zemax to [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > Jonathan Scheuch Do you know a way to export to Solidworks that transfers every lens as a seperate object? Maybe through a third program? Alexander >From Zemax choose the "Export IGES/STEP/SAT/STL Solid Data File" feature and select the SAT file type. The SAT file created contains a seperate solid object for each lens. SolidWorks can open SAT files. Jonathan Scheuch >Hello all, > [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > >Thanks, Alexander nothing at all! Your best post ever Jim. Speech is Silver, Silence is Gold. >nothing at all! > >Your best post ever Jim. > >Speech is Silver, Silence is Gold. I had not intended to respond. I hit the stupid button by mistreak (uh mistake). I'm not exactly sure how I got the post to go out. Sorry, Jim |
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