The three most famous sequential lens design software is CodeV, Zemax, and Oslo. What other options for optical design exist that may fit our needs as well or better for less price? It doesn't mean you are looking at lenses instead of mirrors or w/e. Google sequential vs non seq but essentially sequential is just when rays trace each surface in sequence, non seq is where the rays can split and travel non sequentially, maybe you are trying to reduce stray light or find ghosts ect they usually are similar to CAD in that you place and view components in 3D coordinates while Seq is generally a spreadsheet type interface. You can do both sequential and non-sequential in zemax opticstudio.

I'm not a super active user of any of the lens design software although I have used CodeV a fair amount in the past and have some Zemax use but here is my understanding.īased on my limited understanding, Zemax is most used for sequential lens design and non-sequential systems using lenses whereas our systems and tools use almost no lenses at all, mostly only mirrors. What are the advantages we would gain from using Zemax? What other options for optical design exist that may fit our needs as well or better for less price? as an example, many of our design currently is done in SolidWorks using their proprietary ray tracing (not the OpticStudio integration) with relatively good results. That made me think, why are we using Zemax over other softwares in the first place? Based on my limited understanding, Zemax is most used for sequential lens design and non-sequential systems using lenses whereas our systems and tools use almost no lenses at all, mostly only mirrors. While we would like to upgrade/renew our license, we are finding that the cost to do so is remarkably high given how much Zemax has increased their prices in recent years while also switching to a subscription based service.

I am currently working in the 2012 edition of the software, however most current classes/resources for Zemax are using more up-to-date versions of the software. Hey! I am an optical engineer just starting out after college, and while my main experience is with Zemax OpticStudio, the license my company is using is rather out of date.

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