Program for optical design...
Maurizio
I know CodeV, really good but very expensive.
Oslo Lt is free but with limited surfaces
Anyone know others ?
I have seen the KDP program home page (www.kdpoptics.com) but I think
that also this prog is limited in number surfaces. And it is very
heavy (>64Mb RAM, >100 MB Hard disk space), does someone use it ?
What is the more common program used in scientific and industrial
enviroment ?
Maurizio
Steve Eckhardt
It appears that you have done a good job investigating what is available. The
only leading program you have not mentioned is Zemax. It has most of the
features of CodeV, but starts at $900 US. (That's purchase price, not monthly
fee.) You can download a demo from www.focus-software.com. You should also be
aware that there are versions of Oslo that are not free. They are not limited
as the free one is. Visit www.sinopt.com for more information.
--
Best Regards,
Steve Eckhardt (skeck...@mmm.com)
Opinions expressed herein are my own and may not represent those of my employer.
Ric Rokosz
: I am searching a good program for the optical design.
: I know CodeV, really good but very expensive.
: Oslo Lt is free but with limited surfaces
: Anyone know others ?
Try http://www.gwi.net/OSD
Unlimited surfaces,but time limited to 6 months - can be renewed.
Ric
Mark W. Lund, PhD
Maurizio wrote:
> I am searching a good program for the optical design.
> I know CodeV, really good but very expensive.
> Oslo Lt is free but with limited surfaces
> Anyone know others ?
> I have seen the KDP program home page (www.kdpoptics.com) but I think
> that also this prog is limited in number surfaces. And it is very
> heavy (>64Mb RAM, >100 MB Hard disk space), does someone use it ?
> What is the more common program used in scientific and industrial
>
NO, KDP is not limited in the number of surfaces. It is a full powered
program,
however, and that means that it requires a lot of computing resources.
The wonderful thing about KDP is that you can take it with you wherever
you
go, and don't need a dongle or other key to make it work.
best regards
mark
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark W. Lund, PhD "He represented, indeed to a superlative
VP, Engineering degree, the great moral fallacy of our
MOXTEK, Inc. time, that collective virtue may be pursued
452 West 1260 North without reference to personal behavior."
Orem Utah 84057 --Malcolm Muggeridge
SOFT X-RAY WEB SITE http://www.moxtek.com
Brigham Young University e-mail: lu...@xray.byu.edu
Jim Klein
>Hi Maurizio,
>NO, KDP is not limited in the number of surfaces. It is a full powered
>program,
>however, and that means that it requires a lot of computing resources.
>The wonderful thing about KDP is that you can take it with you wherever
>you
>go, and don't need a dongle or other key to make it work.
Hi Mark,
With version 4.0 I changed things a little. I did have a password on
the update files. I took that off so everyone could always update the
program easily.
In exchange, I put a limit of 25 surfaces in the free distribution. I
am upping that to 50 surfaces in version 4.05. Since I rarely use more
than 50 surfaces, I thought that it would be fair to have the free
distribution with 50 surfaces and ask for a little money if the user
needed more surfaces or wanted one of the other features available
with paid user support.
The fee for paid user support will remain at its present level until
2005 at least.
Jim Klein
Jim
Jim Klein
Surface numbers required to model a specific off-axis optical system
vary among different optical design programs. Why?
1. CODE V has TILT, TILT DAR, TILT BEN. TILT REV and RET for
manipulating tilted surfaces. Any surface may be assigned a tilt.
Surface tilt angle sign conventions are ALPHA and BETA left-handed
positive, GAMMA right handed-positive.
2. OSLO has at least TILT and RTILT plus pikups. It may have more but
I don't remember what they are right now.Surface tilt angle sign
conventions are ALPHA and BETA left-handed positive, GAMMA right
handed-positive.
3. ZEMAX has TILTS and some type of pikups and not every surface type
can be tilted. This is a little uneconomical buy ZEMAX has unlimited
surface numbers.Surface tilt angle sign conventions are ALPHA and BETA
and GAMMA right handed-positive.
4. ACCOS has TILT and RTILT and pikups. These can go on all surfaces.
Surface tilt angle sign conventions are ALPHA and BETA left-handed
positive, GAMMA right handed-positive.
5. KDP has TILT, RTILT, TILT REV, TILT BEN, TILT DAR, RET as well as
TILT AUTO and TILT AUTOM. These can co on all surface types. It has
pikups like in ACCOS. Each lens can be set to use the surface angle
sign convention of CODE V or the surface angle sign convention in
ZEMAX.
The bottom line is that 20 surfaces in one program may be like 60
surfaces in another.
Sincerely,
Jim Klein
Doug Sinclair
not similar to ZEMAX. To my knowledge, ZEMAX cannot accommodate
tilted/decentered surfaces except through the addition of dummy surfaces.
The conventions used in OSLO LT are described at
http://www.sinopt.com/usrguide/enterdat/tiltdec.htm. In OSLO SIX, each
surface can be described individually in either a local or global coordinate
system, and the program converts automatically from one representation to
the other as requested.
The sign convention used in the major optical design programs was introduced
by Gordon Spencer. ORA changed Code V to be consistent with this convention,
thereby promoting standardization in the optical design community. It is
perhaps unfortunate that some of the newer programs have not followed their
lead, since incorrect sign conventions can cause errors in design (not to
mention fabrication!).
Incidentally, the characterization of OSLO given below pertains to the
Super-OSLO/OSLO Series 2 programs of which I was the main developer. Those
programs have been discontinued for several years. The current versions of
OSLO have been developed by a team including as principal members Gordon
Spencer, Dale Buralli, and Andrew Jones. The suggestion that the current
OSLO programs are my creation and therefore linked to me is flattering, but
incorrect.
-Doug
Jim Klein <kdpo...@kdpoptics.com> wrote in message
news:s1pcl4...@corp.supernews.com...
Jim Klein
I was trying to decide whether to use the CODE-V sign convention or
the pure right-handed one in ASAP for KDP (at that time ZEMAX was just
MAX and no one knew about it except Ken and a few friends).
I got such a pounding from all my fellow Laser Physicists at my day
job when I suggested that it was more important to be consistent with
existing programs than to be a good little physicist and stay pure and
right handed. So I did both. It is unfortunate but some people have
not learned that good artists copy, GREAT ARTISTS STEAL. I don't mean
source of course, but sign conventions and the like.
Remember when Kidger's program had the surface thickness as the
distance to the provious surface. They finally changed.
Some people out there alway need to change the beat and use a
harmonica instead of a drum while marching though optical design land.
Jim
James A. Carter III
Another alternative exists that I have not seen in this thread. It is called SynOpSys by
Optical Systems Design, Inc. which is the author's (Don Dilworth) small company.
Please see http://www.gwi.net/OSD/ for information and downloading information. The Beta copy
is free with 180 day evaluation license. I have found this to be a solid program with many
great features. Some day when I get rich doing optical design ;) I will register the demo
for US$1000.
OSLO Pro is perhaps the best commercial program with excellent design capabilities,
user support and a large library of example and starting point design models. OSLO has
a history and legacy that spans decades of satisfied design professionals. Finally, OSLO
offers the most advances tools for laser (Gaussian beam) analysis of all the programs that
I have had the opportunity to evaluate. I will also buy OSLO Pro when I get rich at
optical design.
As for KDP, it is good program too but I agree that the computer resources are very heavy.
Jim gives very good user support online for free and much better if you pay the $300 annual
support fee. KDP has the advantage of reading CodeV sequence files and ACCOS V LENO files.
KDP may suffer somewhat from implementation issues. A 27MByte executable that can be compressed
to less than 4Mbyte reveals a lot of empty code structure in the executable image. Modern
compilers typically allocate this when they load and then usually only when they need it while
releasing memory when data intensive routines exit.. This eases the storage and memory
requirements and enhances speed somewhat. I know that Jim does the best that he can and
certainly much better than I am capable of, so I hope that he takes this as it is meant:
constructive criticism :) However, there may be fundamental limits in FORTRAN 77 that I am
unaware of; after all the Code V computation engine executable (CODEVM.EXE) is about 20 MBytes.
In the final analysis, KDP offers a unique blend of high performance and low cost.
--
James A. Carter III
James Carter Optical Consulting
jaca...@earthlink.net
New web location at http://www.jacarter3.com
Also look for http://www.cecec.com
Maurizio wrote:
>
> I am searching a good program for the optical design.
> I know CodeV, really good but very expensive.
> Oslo Lt is free but with limited surfaces
> Anyone know others ?
> I have seen the KDP program home page (www.kdpoptics.com) but I think
> that also this prog is limited in number surfaces. And it is very
> heavy (>64Mb RAM, >100 MB Hard disk space), does someone use it ?
> What is the more common program used in scientific and industrial
> enviroment ?
>
> Maurizio
Jim Klein
>Maurizio
A few corrections:
The current KDP executable is just over 15 meg in size, not 27. KDP
will run with 32 meg ram and takes about 30 meg of disk space to
store. It might even run on a 486/66 under Windows 95 with 16 meg of
ram but since I can't test that configuration, I make no promisses.
Some of the storage is static. Much of the newer storage is allocated
and deallocated on the fly as the program runs. A good deal of the
code is command input syntax checking. KDP should never crash due to a
simple input error. If it does, you tell me about it and download the
fixed version, usually the next day. Try to get that kind of reponse
from anyone else at any price.
There are several optical analysis programs out there which will crash
if you input the data in only slightly different form than the creator
of the code intended. You know who you are. Programs with such feable
input parser checking that any slightly odd input crashes the code in
such a terrible way that no one can tell the difference between the
input error crash and a source code bug induced crash. I have spent
considerable time and effort to make KDP perform better than that.
My suggestion for more disk space and ram on my home page comes from
personal experience doing large FFTs with 512, 1024, 2048 and 4096
transform grids. Even CODE-V eats a lot of memory and swaps to the
disks when you do things that big. Allocate a big enough array without
sufficient RAM or hard disk swap space and any program will crash any
computer.
The average cheap new PC these days comes with 9-15 gig of disk, 128
meg ram and a high res monitor.
KDP does NOT require heavy computer resources to run. Maybe the
competition wants everyone to believe that but is just ain't so.
Any PC sold at Sears or Comp USA or Fry's has way more power and
capability than will ever be needed to run KDP, now or in the future.
KDP is currently built using a Fortran 95 compiler sold by Lahey
Computer Systems of Incline Village NV, not archaic Fortran 77. The
new user interface is constructed using the Winteracter Library from
ISS in England. It is a truely modern set of software tools. This fast
modern compiler is a joint effort between Lahey and Fujitsu. This
compiler has been used to build KDP since version 4.04. The current
version of KDP is much faster than previous versions, particularly in
terms of optimization. Most of the static storage in KDP is there to
support fast access to the lens, alternate configurations and special
surface databases during optimization. Early on I decided that there
was a trade off between speed and operations needed to manipulate the
lens database and to trace rays. I took the approach that speed was
most important to the professional optical designer.
That is, in fact, who KDP is intended to serve. The person who does
intensive optical design and analysis and requires the flexibility and
capability to do analysis which can not and may never be able to be
performed using other optical design programs.
I never intended KDP to be an idiot's tool with a user interface that
only required a 2 digit IQ and the eye/hand coordination of a 12 year
old playing WARGASM or DUKE NUK'EM in the local vidieo arcade. For
what it's worth, the positive feedback I get from the folks who are
literate enough to read the KDP manual, and who have an attention span
longer than about 15 min., seem to really like what KDP does. I guess
that's what makes doing KDP worth it because there is no money in it
to speak about.
If I was forced to re-write KDP to work like some of the other
programs do, I'd scap the whole project, erase the source code and get
back into something fun like HO trains.
Oh, KDP also reads ZEMAX files.
Paid user support not only includes the expanded surface number, zoom
position and macro size capabilities but also includes the KDPPLOT.EXE
program for generating hard copy and graphics file storage in a number
of useful formats. It also includes full KDP source code access.
Sincerely,
Jim Klein
shoai...@gmail.com
Thanks
nob...@nowhere.net
>Can anybody tell the approximate cost of Code V?
>Thanks
ora_s...@synopsys.com