| New dimensions: WinLens 3DFor 15 years now LINOS has offered WinLens, the user-friendly optical design program for research, education and industry. Starting this June, on the occasion of its 15-year anniversary, a comprehensively expanded and optimized WinLens edition will be available, with new tools and functions for design, analysis and optimization of folded 3D systems. Prisms and diffraction coordinates, tilting and decentering of optical components can be simulated quickly and easily, while WinLens remains as user-friendly as ever.
A wide range of different requirements and influencing variables must be taken into account in professional optical design. In the first step, the required parameters must be determined and calculated, such as image and object focal distances, image and object sizes, aperture, focal length(s) and more. Then the initial system must be adapted to and optimized for the specific parameters of the optical system [1].
Optical design software
A sophisticated design software solution is an important aid in optimizing optical systems and defining tolerances, as these processes depends on several variables such as lens radii, materials, intervals and thickness. Furthermore, transmission and imaging quality and the effect of ghost images on the optical systems must be analyzed. The effect of any processing errors is a necessary part of the subsequent tolerancing. During this entire design process, compromises must be made and the best possible optical systems in terms of quality, feasibility and costs must be determined. Optical design software is thus the first tool in a precision-optics value chain, as it supports the development and implementation of new high-quality optical systems.
WinLens Plus software suite
WinLens Plus from LINOS is a software suite that includes several programs. The actual design program is WinLens Plus, which has numerous tools and functions for analysis and efficient optimization of optical systems [2]. Glass Manager is a database of optical glass and other optical materials, and is especially helpful in development of optical components and systems and their preparation for manufacture [3]. Material Editor lets you define and modify customer-specific materials, and load third-party material databases. LINOS also offers freeware versions of both WinLens and PreDesigner, a powerful tool with an easy-to-use interface for estimating the key parameters required for an imaging system.
Tolerancer
Tolerancer offers a wide range of options for observing tolerances in optical systems and components. The effect of production tolerances on the imaging performance of a given optical system can be depicted through <st1:place>Monte Carlo</st1:place> simulations on WinLens models. Another valuable aid is the simple and direct output of ISO-compliant production drawings in DXF or BMP format with the Tolerancer.
WinLens goes 3D
Many optical systems contain prisms or tilted and decentralized components. The new WinLens edition, WinLens 3D, lets you simulate and optimize such systems with folded beam paths. You can assign tilt and decentration (T&D) to each individual optical interface, component or component group, such as achromatic lenses, for example (Fig. 1).
In many commercial design tools, modeling prisms is very complex and time-consuming. WinLens 3D reduces the complexity with an easy-to-use prism editor. You can added standard LINOS prisms from the catalog to your system with just a few mouse clicks, and the dimensions and glasses of the standard prisms can be modified just as easily.
All of the views and analytical tools have been improved as well; for example, lenses and systems are shown in three-dimensions. The user can choose between different views; such as a wire mesh model versus a solid model, and the models can be displayed in full, 1/2 or 3/4 view (Fig. 2). Sliders let you rotate the display along the three spatial axes. WinLens also has a variety of graphics and tables for evaluating the imaging quality of an optical system. The new WinLens 3D also offers 3D Wavefront Plot for plotting the wave front as a solid model or an interferogram (Fig. 3)
Like its predecessor WinLens Plus, the new WinLens 3D gives you unbeatable value for money. Based on more than fifteen years of experience among LINOS customers and LINOS optical designers, WinLens permits economical, user-friendly and efficient optical design. WinLens 3D is also available in a freeware version, WinLens Basic. For free downloads and further information on optical design and training materials, go to www.winlens.de. To view brief, commented video clips on using the WinLens 3D software suite, see www.opticalsoftware.net. WinLens 3D will be released in June 2009 and is the successor to the previous edition, WinLens Plus.
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Focus on WinLens
The authors
Dr. Geoff Adams, the mind behind WinLens, studied physics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. Following subsequent research activities at British Aerospace he received his doctorate at Imperial College based on his thesis, "Tolerancing of Optical Systems," and went on to Kidger Optics, where he developed a tolerancing program and a lens database. Since 1992 he has been developing and improving the LINOS WinLens software suite, in addition to developing the MachVis selection tool for LINOS. 0000 Thomas Thöniß is head of Research and Development, and Christoph Gerhard is Product Manager for Optics at LINOS in Germany.
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