Setting up your first lens in WinLens3D

WinLens3D editing your lens data - introduction

Hints and tips for getting the best out of the user interface

We discuss the various tools that provide a paraxial and seidel based analysis of a lens system

This describes the chief ray or field aberration plots - astigmatism, distortion & lateral colour

This describes the ray fan related plots - OPD, TRA, Longiitudinal aberration, OSC/Isoplanetism and the ray fan table

An overview of the features used to setup and analyse tilts and decenters in WinLens3D - it includes the neat prism wizard

The rules that govern the location of surface and components when working with tilts and decenters

Showing how to add LINOS prisms and how to create custom prisms

We show how to setup some reflective scanners so that it is easy to model the scanning motions

How to use the interactive glass map in to order to quickly change glasses in the system

How to setup zoom lenses and some useful zoom friendly features of graphs and tables

Thin films database & modelling has been significant enhanced. Includes ability to add custom films to database + dedicated manual
Latest Qioptiq components - inc aspheric condensers
Latest glass data from CDGM, Hikari, Hoya, Ohara, Schott & Sumita
Improvements to chromatic aberration graph
Various bug fixes

Improved printouts of all graphics - especially for zoom lenses
Various bug fixes

Latest glass data from CDGM, Hikari, Hoya, Ohara, Schott & Sumita
Improved printout of lens drawing

Latest glass data from CDGM, Hikari, Hoya, Ohara, Schott & Sumita
Clear indications of ECO friendly and Moldable glasses
ECO status now separated out from availability status
Enhanced glass search capabilities
Latest Qioptiq catalog components
Spot diagrams: matrix option in plot
Spot diagrams: option to remove a percentage of the lateral colour - usefull in systems with large amounts of this aberration so can compare spot patterns from different wavelengths at large scale

NB Versions 1.2.5, 1.2.6 & 1.2.7 were either mainly bug fixes or a re-badging when Qioptiq became part of Excelitas

With apologies to all effected - this is a bug fix for those whose PC regional setting is French [though not Belgium French], or a Slavic and Finno-Ugric language. In specific it will occur if the digit grouping symbol is a blank, rather than a dot or a comma . Typically it showed itself during startup with an error message. WinLens3D then loaded, but was not operative.

BTW our twitter account ‘LensDesignApps’ will give you earliest news on updates!

This is a significant improvement which means that the user can now model common diffractive elements.
enhancement: Linear gratings can now be modelled
enhancement: HOE’s [2 point source] can now be modelled
enhancement: New database for Qioptiq gratings [reflection and transmission]
enhancement: Gaussian beam plots[any] improved element representation
manual - Introduction: updated to include diffractive surfaces
bug: improved import of some Sigma2001 files

- enhancement: sensitivities table [engineering tab] now has gaussian beam option
- change: ‘Chengdu’ glasses actually come from ‘CDGM’, so now that maker name is corrected [old files with Chengdu will still work!]
- bug: correction to truncation ratio displayed in the Gaussian beam table

Gaussian beam modelling enhancements for the Munich Laser Show [available 10th May 2011]
- enhancement: extra Gaussian beam options, including beam propagation factor & rectangular beam profile option
- enhancement: new zoom friendly, customisable Gaussian beam plot showing beam profile[s] for circular or rectangular profiles
- enhancement: improved Gaussian beam table, including truncation ratio and option to display either path with rectangular profile
- enhancement: latest glass data from CDGM [Chengdu] Hoya, Ohara, Schott & Sumita
- enhancement: latest Qioptiq components - including the new hyperchromates

- enhancement: FileViewer [CTRL+Shift+f2] improved. Better layout & remembers last file location. Significantly improves inspection and loading of all or part of a WinLens SPD file.
- bug fix: occasional error message when pasting component[s] copied from SystemDataEditor or DiskFileViewer
- bug fix: occasional error message in file read
- bug fix: when creating a new block, the changed aperture value was not saved

[Available from 6th September 2010] Software branding changed from LINOS Photonics to Qioptiq [LINOS has been part of Qioptiq since 2007]
- enhancement: manuals & help-files refreshed
- enhancement: latest glass data from Schott, Ohara, Hoya, CDGM [Chengdu] & Sumita
- enhancement: FindGlass dialog added to WinLens3D. Powerful tool for selecting a glass. Wherever you might can change a glass [in the various editors], there is now also a small glass map icon. Click this to load FindGlass. This has several ways of getting a glass:
* list of most recent glasses
* text box with type-ahead list. Can setup to 3 conditions for the glass [name, make, index etc etc]
- bug fix: crash in high resolution monitors [>2500pixels width] when WinLens expanded to fill that space

- bug fix. when drawing solid model and selected ray rings, rays in object space were badly drawn
- bug fix. with zoom system - when drawing solid model and select ray rings or sag fans, can get an unnecessary error message
- bug fix. with zoom system: in ghost graph could get an ‘out of range subscript’ error message, if elected to display the 3D option
- bug fix. model scaling of lens drawing in graph ghost was wrong
- bug fix. with zoom systems, when displaying the seidel table and inspecting the child table, with ‘all zoom’ option, only data for first zoom was shown
- bug fix. CRASH: if a search of the component database had got no results, and then clicked on any line in the database
- bug fix.: when doing 2D drawing, could sometimes get error message if aperture of a cemented surface was larger than the radius of curvate of its neighbour [if spherical]
- bug fix.: Zemax import - aspheric coeffs were wrong if system had non unity scale factor, e.g. scaling in cm or inches etc
- bug fix. CodeV zoom export - apertures in all zooms all set to zoom 1 value
- bug fix. Oslo zoom export - for zooms > 1, beam rad aps were sometimes doubled
- bug fix. CRASH: if a system was setup so that it consisted of just coordinate breaks
- bug fix. Zemax zoom import - on importing zoom lens, it may happen that the apertures for zooms>1 are set to same value as first

- bug fix. Zemax import. corrected out of range error import zemax design with object surface NOT surf 0 AND stop at rear!
- bug fix. Extra protection for file import where user had deleted part of the file.

- bug fix. Toric RayTrace - ray missing surface. If a ray cannot intersect with a surface [ignoring apertures], then a flag is set and the ray trace ceases. For toric raytraces, this ‘ray miss’ was properly detected, but the flag was not set, so the raytrace continued spuriously. The flag is now set appropriately.

- enhancement. slider - defocus. If angular aberrations are selected, a slider controlling defocus will change the angular defocus [previously only linear defocus was altered]
- bug fix. division by zero error when user chooses to load the seidel summaries table for a few systems
- bug fix. full field spot diagram for angular aberrations for rotationally symmetric systems were not rotationally symetric
- bug fix. distortion plot values for angular aberrations for systems with tilt were odd - of course distortion in asymmetric systems is a somewhat nebulous concept - but these values were clearly wrong - getting larger as we moved toward the axis!
- bug fix. occasionally a good lens will refuse to draw - claiming scale is too large. Although sometimes true, this was a false message which appeared after v1.1.5, if the object distance is large [though object not selected to be drawn], the second surface of the first component had a larger aperture then the first surface]

- bug fix. paraxial raytrace at secondary wavelengths. If the chosen field parameter is image size or image angle. paraxial raytrace was setup so that, at the secondary wavelengths, the system had the same paraxial image value as at the mid [primary] wavelength. By contrast, the real ray trace, at any wavelength always works from the same object point - this being the ‘real thing’. These were not used anywhere else, except in the distortion calcs, where it caused an obvious offset of the ‘red’ and ‘blue’ values. This has now been changed, so that the paraxial raytrace now copies the real raytrace.
- bug fix. Zemax file import. Some files contain an undefined WAVM tag to specify the wavelengths, instead of the normal WAVL tag. These are now handled, and better overall ‘protection’ against badly defined .ZMX files has been added at the same time.

- object surface now shown in 3D drawing
- other improvements to drawing of object & image in 3D

- main form no longer maximised on load & its position is remembered

- bug fix: tilt data for a component was lost if re-editing existing component in its specialised editor
- bug fix: problem reversing a LINOS prism [custom prisms ok]
- bug fix: decentering a Fold Mirror decenters the reference axis [not desired - unlike tilting a fold mirror where it is correct for the ref axis to be tilted 2x]

Launch version on CD’s given away at Munich Laser show