Raytrace lives!

[bryancole]

Hi All,

In case anyone is still following this group and cares, I though I'd post a notification that Raytrace is back from the dead!

Raytrace now runs on Python-3 and has gained a few funky new features in the intervening years:

- Full polarisation analysis

- Dispersive optics (with full library of glass-types)

- Coated optics

- Achromatic doublets

- Diffraction Gratings

- Group-velocity dispersion analysis and ultrafast pulse shape calculation

- Jupyter notebook integration (3D rendering in a notebook with buttons for view rotation/pan/zoom).

The UI now relies on the Qt backend for TraitsUI. Support for Qt5 needs a patched version of Enable (come on Enthought, fix this!) which is a PITA. I've not looked at the step-export recently so I expect this is broken. I'd like to remove the PythonOCC as a dependancy and make my own interface to OpenCascade using Cython (just pulling the C++ bits we need for step-export/import).

Still no point-spread function / diffraction analysis :(.

Still no decent docs.

Anyone looking to try the package out should probably post to this list for assistance. I've not tried to run it on Windows although there's no fundamental reason it shouldn't work. Just get all the requirements installed... (use conda for managing a virtual environment; it's great).

Bryan

[Permafacture]

Cool!  Glad to hear!

I might check it out in the near future.  I've become a much better programmer in the past 6+ years so maybe I can help out again and actually be helpful this time :)

-Elliot