What’s
New in This
Update?
The update to version 13.33 incorporates the
following changes:
Features:
1. The onscreen glassmap display now shows the
partials of glass model glasses along with those of the glasses in the
table then displayed, if you ask for a graph of those partials.
This lets you see what kind of behavior the GLM variable is modeling
– so you can substitute a real glass with similar properties if
one exists. That way the secondary color should come back close
to what the model predicts.
2. Say you’ve designed a very nice 5-element lens that uses
expensive glass. You also have a 6-element design with cheaper
glass. Which to you build? A new feature, GCOST, will
examine all of the glass types and element shapes in the lens and
prepare a table with the estimated cost of lens blanks. There are
two sections: one assumes you will buy flat blanks, and the other
molded blanks.
This feature reads the relative cost of each glass type from those
tables that contain those data. Currently, the Hoya, Guangming,
and Lzos do not.
Bugs Fixed:
1. BTOL did not print the tolerance for the
conic constant, although it was part of the budget.
Syntax Summary pages changed:
8
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Version
13.32
The update to version 13.32 incorporates the following changes:
Features:
1. The glass model (GLM) has been
enhanced. This feature uses a 9-term polynomial that gives the
approximate index of any glass on the glass map, at any wavelength,
given only the values of the wavelength, Nd and Vd. (Modeled that
way, the glass becomes a continuous variable that can be optimized
along with radii and thicknesses.) That polynomial worked quite
well over the CDF spectral range, but failed outside it. The new
polynomial has 11 terms and works over the range 0.8 to 0.35 um.
We have used it to design an apochromat covering that range, and the
program was able to find rather ordinary glasses that gave
diffraction-limited performance.
2. DSEARCH has been improved. If it encounters ray failures
when evaluating a potential design, it takes steps to resolve the
failure and continue optimization. That process is now more
robust, resulting in more cases evaluated and fewer skipped.
3. The MTF over field feature (MOF) can now draw the MTF values
at up to four spatial frequencies, as a function of field point.
Before, it could only draw one. (The dialog entry still supports
only one, so you have to use the command form if you want more.)
Bugs Fixed:
1. The new ASC aberration (slope control)
disabled the AEC (edge control) aberration. Now both work.
2. The mnemonic for the sensitivity reduction aberration (ECO)
conflicted with the fifth-order aberration ECOMA. So it has been
renamed ECM.
3. In some cases, after you ran the ANNEAL program, the progress
bar, which looks like a thermometer, stayed onscreen instead of closing.
Syntax Summary pages changed:
18
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Version
13.31
The update to version 13.31 incorporates the following changes:
Features:
1. A new switch has been implemented. Switch 37, if
turned on, will force the program to perform sequential raytracing even
if the lens is in nonsequential mode. This is intended mainly for
systems with a roof prism, which require nonsequential tracing to draw
the ray paths correctly, (which is much slower than normal raytracing),
and you want to optimize the image, which comes out the same either
way. So turn on this switch, optimize your lens at high speed,
and then turn it off again to make your drawings.
2. BTOL can now calculate the tolerances on prisms. Before,
only the flat surfaces got a tolerance, telling you the fringe count
permitted on the faces. Now, each face also gets an angle
tolerance, in the Y-direction for most faces and in the X-direction for
roof faces – plus a piston error that tells you how much thicker
or thinner the prism can be at each face. See Section 12.1.1 for
a description of this new feature.
3. A new aberration is now available: ASC in the AANT file
will automatically control the steepness of all surfaces in the
system. Read about it in Section 10.3.12.
Bugs Fixed:
1. Footprint plots did not correctly show the location of
a CAI circle if the surface had a decentered CAO. Also, the
Foucault test did not properly position the aperture map in that case.
2. The new feature that shows a combination of decentered
apertures and EFILE edges could draw some combinations incorrectly in
SOLID.
3. A DO MACRO loop would hang the system, after the last update.
4. If you reduced the number of wavelengths in the system with a
WT1… entry, the weights formerly assigned to the rest of the
wavelengths remained in place until you changed them too.
Although perhaps not a bug, this was undesirable; now the program
cleans things up for you.
Syntax Summary pages changed:
2, 12, 16
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Version
13.30
The update to version 13.30 incorporates the following changes:
Features:
1. The image-tools dialog MIT is now
non-modal. This means that you can minimize it, work elsewhere,
and then activate it again – and it comes back just as you left
it. Before, you had to process everything all over, which could
take several minutes for some of the more complex kinds of analysis.
2. The PAD scan feature can now be stopped by clicking the
stopsign button.
3. A major change has been made to the drawing routines.
You can now assign both a decentered CAO and EFILE data to a lens or a
mirror. In this case, the element is considered to be a cored or
sliced section of a larger parent part, to which the EFILE data
apply. This is a handy way to depict an off-axis paraboloid, for
example. Read about it in Section 7.8.
4. We have resurrected a feature we considered obsolete that
makes it possible to create a set of GMODEL image models and then
analyze the composite image. The format has changed slightly,
however, so be sure to read about it first.
Bugs Fixed:
1. The status of the PON option was shown in the tray with
the meaningless characters “RSIG”. We don’t
know why, and have changed it back to “PON”.
Syntax Summary pages changed:
17
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Version
13.29
The update to version 13.29 incorporates the following changes:
Features:
1. The Image Tools dialog (MIT) now lets you enter a
multiplier to control the number of cycles of sine wave and square wave
targets that are drawn. This replaces the previous option that
gave only a 2X multiplier, and it helps to reduce the influence of edge
effects, which are due to light diffracting out of the picture.
If you increase the reference dimension and the number of cycles, this
effect is reduced.
2. We have modified the rules that apply to the pupil rotation
that shows up when you assign a real pupil to your lens. Things
are now simpler; tracing from a point on the +Y axis gives a pupil that
is not rotated, which makes sense. Read about this in Section
2.6.1 for details.
3. A new system option PRRULES puts into effect principal-ray
rules, which are intended for spectrometer design where you want the
image in each color to be sharp but do not want them to fall at the
same place. This rule essentially ignores lateral color.
Image analysis and optimization are affected. Read more in
Section 3.2.
4. MIT can now analyze a slit object with coherent light.
Bugs Fixed:
1. A recent update disabled raytracing with OBD input where the
input angle exceeded 90 degrees.
2. Certain unusual lens edge shapes were not correctly drawn by
CDWG and ZDWG.
Syntax Summary pages changed:
2, 3, 12
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Version
13.28
The update to version 13.28 incorporates the following changes:
Features:
1. The PAD scan option (which draws the PAD display
repeatedly, from on axis to the edge of the field, so you can see how
the beam behaves and how the image changes with field) now has two
speeds. Clicking on the button, which looks like an up-arrow,
scans at 1/10 second intervals between fields; if you hold down the
<Ctrl> key while you click, it is 10 times slower, which lets you
study things better. But takes longer.
2. Improvements continue to be made to the real-pupil
feature. Sometimes a user will find a (usually weird) lens, for
which the pupil search fails, and we fix it. As of now, all tests
succeed.
3. The FRINGES option for examining the wavefront now rotates the
picture with skew field, as you would expect.
4. The progress bar now has a Stop button, giving you another way
to interrupt some lengthy calculations. This sound silly –
but interrupting a Fortran program while it runs by clicking a button
in a C++ program is more complicated than you think. Sometimes
the old stopsign button works better, and sometimes the new Stop button
does. Now you have two.
5. The partial-coherence effect in the Image Tools dialog (MIT)
now works with two-dimensional targets. Before, it was only 1D,
as is PARTC. Now you can see the image of any target you like
(such as a microlithography mask) formed with your lens, at a desired
pupil filling. Even a phase mask.
Bugs Fixed:
1. Problems were fixed related to analyzing a skew field
point while VFIELD array is in effect.
2. The printed output from MIT drew the title text upside down
– although it was upright on the monitor. Also, the MIT
array target option, which has a box where you can enter the diameter
of an array of circles, labeled the data as a radius, not a diameter,
which it was,
3. The program drew the entering paths of rays in DWG, ZDWG , and
PAD incorrectly at field point HBAR = -1, with a real pupil. The
paths were correct inside the lens, however.
4. MAP SPOT with switch 85 off (using a fixed color table for the
rays instead of the visual color of the wavelength) did not cycle the
table correctly.
5. Not really a bug, but the MIT post-processor labeled the plot
saying that the processing rectangles were “bins” –
which is confusing since the word is used elsewhere with a different
context. Now they are called rectangles.
6. If you clicked on the stopsign button while the PAD scan was
in progress, the current lens was corrupted. To avoid this, we
now disable that button during a scan.
7. The recent feature that rotates the ray grid in the pupil if a
real pupil was requested – which is an essential feature for
analyzing skew field points when VFIELD or WAP is in effect – has
some more echoes: the definition of what is the upper rim ray would
depend on which feature tried to trace it. This is inconvenient,
and we have modified that feature to be more consistent.
Syntax Summary pages changed:
none
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Version
13.27
The update to version 13.27 incorporates the following changes:
Features:
1. The Foucault-test dialog MFK now has a Z-axis
slider as well as one that moves the knife in X or Y, so you can
emulate the focus shift needed to test a mirror at several zones.
Also, it now displays a center trace through the pattern, making it
easy to adjust the focus for the desired zone.
2. Mode switch 85 has been activated. This will cause
geometric image analysis features such as RFT, SPT, TFS, etc. to draw
the data in approximately the color that would be visible to the
eye. This switch also draws a black box behind spot diagrams
(otherwise an excellent image would appear as a white circle, and would
be invisible on white paper). Fans plots can be drawn with a
white background, but in this case the intensity of the lines is
reduced to about 60% of the color value one sees on a spot
diagram. This ensures that yellow light, for example, shows up as
a medium brown instead of yellow – which would also be nearly
invisible.
Wavelengths in the IR show up as red, and in the UV show up as
violet. Switch 37, which used to toggle this functionality, has
been disabled. It seems better to show the user something,
instead of nothing, just because the wavelength in question is
invisible.
In order to add colors properly (red + green + blue = white) the
graphics driver has to be able to implement a logical OR
operation. Monitor drivers do, as far as we know, but some
printer drivers may not. None of the common pdf drivers we have
tested can, and in that case the last color overwrites the
others. See the discussion of mode switches in Appendix B for a
discussion of this topic.
3. A new surface shape is available. USS type 7 is a
power-series surface involving odd as well as even-order terms.
This expansion includes a term that is linear in R, which can be used
for creating an axicon, and if this term is nonzero the paraxial power
of the surface is infinite. So the paraxial raytrace cannot deal
with it and will ignore this term.
Bugs Fixed:
1. There were no bugs reported this update.
Syntax Summary pages changed:
2
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Version
13.26
The update to version 13.26 incorporates the following changes:
Features:
1. REVERSE now works with ZFILE zoom lenses. It
reverses the surfaces, groups, and zoom motions, and then assigns
object parameters to each zoom based on the paraxial image properties
of that zoom calculated before the reversal. There is a
restriction, however: before reversal, each zoom position was allowed
to have its own object description. This means that some zooms
could have an infinite object, while in others it could be
finite. When reversed, however, the entire lens is either in
FOCAL or AFOCAL mode, losing some generality.
2. The WAP and VFIELD options now work for skew objects.
The vignetted pupil is rotated as required, according to the requested
GBAR and XPP0 values. Before, the effect on the pupil was defined
in, and accurate for, objects in the meridional plane only.
Bugs Fixed:
1. The FCV command, when applied to a lens in pure AFOCAL
mode, returned values that were exactly 100 times too small.
FOCAL, ACCOM, and APERFECT were correct, however.
Syntax Summary pages changed:
None
_____________________________________________________________________
Version
13.25
The update to version 13.25 incorporates the following changes:
Features:
1. As soon as we disabled the redundant function of switch 65, a
user presented a case where it was very useful, so we have reinstated
that switch. (It reduces the pupil as needed to avoid vignetting
in DWG, ZDWG, and PAD/D drawings.)
2. REVERSE now works with DOEs. It still does not treat
HOEs or gratings, and if anyone needs that functionality, please let us
know and we’ll get to it.
3. A new construction parameter aberration is now
available. SCAO returns the sag of the surface at the current
CAO. Since the latter can float or be a variable, this gives you
a new way to control edge feathering, especially in zoom lenses, where
the ECP and ECN would only consider apertures in a given zoom, not the
maximum aperture needed for all zooms.
4. The algorithm that finds the real pupil in extreme wide-angle
systems has been enhanced. Previously, it could fail to work if
the entering beam was close to 90 degrees to the axis.
5. AI now is more integrated with the ZFILE zoom feature.
You can, for example, do things like
PLOT 14 TH FOR ZOOM = 1 TO 10
DO MACRO FOR ZOOM = 3 TO 6
ZOOM?
ZOOM = 4
The first two examples ignore the current STEPS setting, since the
number of steps is implied by the number of zooms requested.
6. Some users seem to have the idea that the WAP 3 pupil option,
since it is the most powerful for its purpose, is appropriate for every
lens they work on. This is clearly not the case, and to make the
point more clearly, we have enlarged Section 2.6.3
. All users are encouraged to read that chapter carefully, since
this is a complicated subject.
Bugs Fixed:
1. GDIS aborted if rays from any field point failed to
trace. Now it just ignores that point.
2. REVERSE did not work properly with prisms, and did not
properly reassign dn/dt data.
3. If you asked for a ray grid for optimization at a given
surface number, with switch 83 on, the program could abort.
4. OFPSPRD would abort with an AFOCAL lens.
Syntax Summary pages changed:
2, 14
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The update to version 13.24 incorporates the following changes:
Features:
1. A new ray aberration, UNR will return the ray angle with respect to the surface normal after refraction. This can be used, together with UNI (the angle before refraction) to control steep angles of rays both entering and exiting a lens.
2. You may now enter VFIELD data in a lens where the stop position is implied by the paraxial value of YP1, which can be a design variable. This is a good way to find the best stop location, subject to a permitted degree of vignetting in the final lens. Before, VFIELD required a real stop.
3. Switch 39 is now on by default. It was turned on in the SYSTART MACro before, but that MACro was not updated in older directories of long-time users. Too many users sent me examples of lenses with weird edge data – which they never looked at. Now they will.
4. Switch 65 has now been disabled. This was intended to show how much of the beam actually got through a lens, in PAD/D and DWG drawings. More recent enhancements, such as the WAP 2 and 3 options, make it obsolete and redundant. So to make life simpler, that feature is gone.
5. The DMASK plotted routines now use the same scale in all modes. Before, the PROFILE was at a different scale, making direct comparisons difficult.
Bugs Fixed:
1. If you tried to alter the VFIELD data in a ZFILE zoom lens, the data change was fine, but a change to the HBARs for those data was not honored.
Syntax Summary pages changed:
2
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