What’s
New in This
Update?
The update to version 13.74 incorporates the
following changes:
Features:
1. A new aberration mnemonic, UP0, lets you
control the angle of the full-field chief ray at the object. This
is a handy way to control a telecentric object when the stop surface is
changing and the angle does not automatically remain small.
2. The AANT file now lets you refer to the last few surfaces with
special mnemonics LB0, LB1, and LB2, meaning “last but
zero”, “last but one”, and “last but
two”. These are useful when you want to control mechanical
properties near the image with the SPB feature, and the actual surface
numbers are constantly changing.
3. The program now better manages the way it applies the flood
fill in PAD to Mangin mirrors assigned EFILE edge data. (Since
the element is in effect drawn twice, strange things sometimes
happened.)
4. A new feature, FTRANS, will estimate the amount of Fresnel
transmission loss that is due to cemented interfaces. The
calculation can be done exactly, in polarization mode with PTRACE, but
the new feature gives you a simpler way to determine whether your
transmission would be higher with a cemented or airspaced group.
5. BTOL now has a simpler way to specify that a whole class of
variables is exact. This uses the form EXACT ALL { list }.
Bugs Fixed:
1. The parameter input shortcut VLIST TH ALL
varied all thicknesses, as you would expect, including that between the
last two surfaces in AFOCAL systems – which it
shouldn’t. Now it doesn’t.
2. The flood-fill-fudge factor FFF was rendered by SOLID and
RSOLID, even though it was intended only for the PAD drawings.
3. An intermediate release following 13.73 had an incorrect
compile date, causing customers whose support was soon to expire to be
told that it already had.
4. The U glass table data for the transmission of the material GE
were not processed properly.
________________________________________________________________
Version
13.73
The update to version 13.73 incorporates the
following changes:
Features:
1. We have investigated the issue where a user
has a dual-monitor setup and wants to move some SYNOPSYS windows onto
the second screen. You cannot move most windows out of the
default outer frame, but if you enlarge this frame to cover both
monitors you can put things anywhere. The feature that positions
the PAD window where you last put it will now check if it is off-screen
when you restart, and will move it onscreen in that case. It is
possible for you to resize the frame in a way that PAD moves off
screen, where you cannot see or close it, however. There are
three easy ways to recover, should that occur, described in Section
13.22.
2. The algorithm that stacks the surface numbers of existing
materials in the glass-table display has been improved so that they are
positioned better.
3. The calculation of the paraxial quantity FNUM now divides the
result by the final index of refraction, as it should.
4. The PAD display can optionally color the lens elements, using
the flood-fill feature of the graphics driver. We discovered that
some graphics cards render lines in a way that leaves a tiny gap
between segments, which causes the flood fill to leak out and cover the
entire screen. So we provided a new command, FFF EXTEND, which extends the
lines slightly and seems to solve the problem. This is described
in Section 13.3.
5. A new variable declaration is available:
VLIST GLM ALL [ EXCEPT SN
SN ... ]. This
will only vary those elements that already have a GLM glass model
assigned. (The form VY SN
GLM will force the model to be used on the requested surface, even if
it is not there initially.)
6. The CHG file entry SN
GLM will automatically try to fit the glass model to any current
glass-table glass then assigned, or to a material assigned fixed index
values, which was not the case before.
7. The AEI and SPB features (Automatic Element Insertion,
Saddle-Point Build) have a new option. The CENTER directive will
cause the program to try insertions that are located midway between
adjacent elements, after it has tried the saddle-point additions.
The latter are always generated very close to an element, and this new
feature sometimes finds minima that the other misses.
8. The FOCUS command now varies the back focus with limits that
permit either positive or negative results. Before, the sign was
not allowed to change.
Bugs Fixed:
1. The multiple-plot feature Q1 ... Q4...QPLOT
would abort while making some pictures if switch 85 was on.
2. The new 90-character filename feature crashed if you used the
File Open button. This is fixed, but we note that the very
friendly MWL feature will only open files whose name is 50 characters
or fewer. Most sane people don’t save files with huge names
anyway.
3. If you entered a GET command with a location number that was
not from 1 to 10, the program printed a nice error message – and
left you with switch 45 turned off, causing AI symbols to be
interpreted only in column 1 thereafter.
4. Problems have been fixed related to the use of the ZoomBar
slider with a system assigned thermal shadowing.
5. If you did not enter complete data for some of the automatic
monitoring features, such as ACM, the intended defaults were not
applied properly.
________________________________________________________________
Version
13.72
The update to version 13.72 incorporates the
following changes:
Features:
1. The glass map now has an option to show only
those materials identified by the vendor as i-line glasses. Those
are intended for UV systems where you want high transmission and
minimal darkening of the glass with time. At the moment, only
some Ohara glasses are so designated, since the Schott company has not
replied to our requests for such information.
2. The feature to convert Zemax files, ZMC, will now interpret
glass names of up to 16 characters, instead of the previous 8.
There is no guarantee that the names will match exactly those in the
SYNOPSYS catalogs, however, so you still have to carefully review the
results.
3. New variable declarations are now available. These
are:
VLIST RAD ALL [ EXCEPT SN SN SN ... ]
VLIST TH ALL [ EXCEPT SN SN SN ... ]
VLIST TH ALL AIR
VLIST TH ALL GLASS.
If you declare your variables in this fashion, you do not have to
itemize all of the surface numbers, as before. If you work on
20-element microlithography lenses, you will be pleased.
4. SPEC and PRT now identify parameters that are the target of a
pickup elsewhere with the symbol “T”. This is to help
you avoid finding that an innocent change you made has caused a
disaster elsewhere.
5. The CFIX directive (which fixes all clear apertures) now has
the option SN CFIX,
which will fix only the entered surface. Both
of these are used only in a CHG file.
6. You can now enter the directive SN GLM in a CHG file to fit
a
glass model to an existing glass-table material.
7. The Variables dialog (linked from MOM or from the EE editor)
now disables the “All” button for glass types if a
wavelength is longer than 2.1 microns. You cannot use the glass
model anyway, in that case, but you might click the button by mistake
and get errors later.
8. File names may now be as long as 90 characters. Some zmx
files longer than the previous limit of 50 characters were not
converted, and that is why. Note that opening such files may not
work with real-time input, since the input line, including the prompt,
must itself be no more than 90 characters. In that case, put the
request into a MACro, the processing of which does not involve a prompt.
Bugs Fixed:
1. The glass table transmission range display
did not work.
2. GDIS did not work properly if the lens had a real pupil.
3. The flood-fill option in PAD would sometimes bleed onto the
entire screen. We have identified a potential cause (differing
precision in some calculations) and believe the problem has been
fixed. Users are encouraged to report any future occurrence.
4. If you entered a lens file but forgot to include the object
definition, you got a nice error message. But when you closed
that message, it caused the PAD screen to redraw, displaying the
message again, in an infinite loop. Now, PAD will not redraw if
the lens has no object distance defined.
_________________________________________________________________
Version
13.71
The update to version 13.71 incorporates the
following changes:
Features:
1. The drawing programs DWG and PAD/D now show
very steep curves more precisely. The curve can go almost to the
hemisphere point and no longer shows polygon lines.
2. A new feature AED will automatically change a lens element so
that it has no power or thickness, while optimizing with a desired
merit function. If the process succeeds, you can simply delete
that element and the lens is just as good. It can even scan the
whole lens and recommend which element can best be removed, if any.
3. Two new automatic controls are available for the AANT
file. These are AGE and AAE, which work like the AEC control
– controlling edges – but the former applies only to glass
edges and the latter only to airspace edges. It makes sense to
allow two different targets.
4. The STRAIN program now has plot option. This lets you
easily see where you would gain from splitting, or removing, an element.
Bugs Fixed:
1. A buried mirror (inside a block of glass)
could cause EFILE data to be created incorrectly.
2. The File Open dialogs did not work on Windows 7.
3. The thermal shadowing feature ATS was disabled in a recent
update.
4. The entering rays for a system with OBF object were not drawn
correctly in PAD.
5. The Fourier-transform MTF DMTF did not show the reference
marks for a perfect MTF.
_________________________________________________________________
Version
13.70
The
update to version 13.70 incorporates the
following changes:
Features:
1. Two new materials are added to the U glass
catalog. These are GE-NIR and SILICON-NIR. Those materials
come with a set of 30 interpolation coefficients, rather than the usual
six or 12, which yield index values as a function of both wavelength
and temperature. All of this is based on a NASA study, and is
probably more accurate than the data for the older types, which were
based on vendor catalogs. Both are only valid in the NIR range,
so for GE lenses in the thermal infrared, you should continue to use
the name GE.
2. A new command SLOPE will print the slope angle of every
surface at the aperture given by the current CAO or EFILE point.
This helps you to spot surfaces that are too steep, which you may then
control with the DSLOPE aberration in the AANT file.
3. A new option is available in the dialog Ready Made Raysets
(found in the MACro editor EE and also as an option in MOM).
Selection number 9 generates a small set of rays with GSR and GTR
requests, which therefore does not include rays in the quadrants of the
pupil. This is intended to be a quick and dirty way to evaluate a
potential configuration. It will optimize more quickly than would
a full set of rays, and if the lens seems promising, you can change to
a more complete set later.
4. The logic for tracing roof prisms has been
modified. At issue is what to do if a ray hits exactly at the
roof line. To prevent the nonsequential raytrace from looping
forever, we previously offset a zero coordinate to a very small nonzero
value – but that did not work if there was a real pupil because
the ray then got shifted right back again! So we have beefed up
the logic, and now it seems to be more robust. Users are asked to
test any such systems they may have, and let us know if any problems
appear.
5. We also added a warning box if you run BTOL on a system
containing a roof prism. Such runs can take a very long time to
finish, and you are advised to turn on switch 37 first, which greatly
speeds things up. The box lets you do it there, if you have
forgotten.
6. The FVF command now transfers EFILE points A or E to the CAO,
if there is no CAO assigned or the EFILE point is lower. This
way, you only have to set up the edges as you wish, and FVF will create
a set of vignetted aperture data to match. Friendly.
7. To make tolerancing with BTOL more efficient, we have added a
table in Section 12.1.3.3 giving the Strehl ratio as a function of
wavefront variance. The former is calculated from the latter
anyway, and the variance behaves better during tolerancing and
calculating adjustments. So we recommend that users who need a
tolerance budget based on the SR to instead consult the table and
tolerance with WAVE instead. (TOL STREHL still works, of course,
if the lens is well behaved.)
Bugs Fixed:
1. The LSA plot showed extra lines if you ran
an FCV or DIS analysis first.
2. It was possible for the system to ignore vignetting if an
optimization run aborted for unusual reasons.
3. If you ran a DO MAC loop and the MACro contained the directive
STEPS = NB, the loop would run forever.
_________________________________________________________________
Version
13.69
The update to version 13.69 incorporates the
following changes:
Features:
1. The DO MACRO ... feature now restores the
lens to the original state when it is finished. Before, it left
it at the last condition and printed a warning to that effect.
This is better.
2. Switch 78 has been disabled. This called for the glass
map to display current lens materials with the N and V currently in
effect at the current wavelengths (instead of Nd and Vd). But
there is a selection in the Graph dialog to do this for the whole glass
table, and it makes sense for the lens data to follow along, so this
switch is no longer necessary.
3. DSEARCH can now accept up to 40 special AANT entries, instead
of the previous 20.
4. The MAP program has been enhanced. It can now map the
RMS spot size as well as the wavefront variance over the field.
It also now lets you specify the fiducial and analog scales in three
ways, one of which calls for auto-scaling the data, and it also can
draw single-value results as a circle instead of a bar, which is easier
to interpret. This is much friendlier. Read about the
extensive capability of this powerful feature at the above link.
Bugs Fixed:
1. The saddle-point build program SPB did not work properly if
you selected USE CURRENT and the index of any material was greater than
2.0 or if the system was monochromatic.
_________________________________________________________________
Version
13.68
The update to version 13.68 incorporates
the
following changes:
Features:
1. The paraxial quantity “BACK”,
which formerly had no application to AFOCAL systems, now refers to the
last thickness before the two terminal dummy surfaces in those
systems. This is a convenient way, for example, to see and
control the eye relief of an eyepiece.
2. A new AANT entry, ACM works almost the same as ACC; it
monitors thicknesses that are variables and penalizes the merit
function if any become smaller than the target value. (ACC keeps
them from getting larger than the target.) Using both of these is
a good way to keep your lens thicknesses reasonable, and is a better
way than assigning limits to the variables themselves.
3. A new mode switch is enabled. Switch 91 will allow the
index of GLM and GBC variables to get as high as 1.88. If it is
off, the previous limit of 1.8 applies. Some catalogs now have
crown glasses in this range, and this switch allow those variables to
reach that limit. If your intended glass source does not provide
such glasses, just keep the switch off. (Flint glasses varied
with GBF always have an upper limit of 1.92.)
4. A new feature, AAA, will automatically assign an aspheric term
to the surface in the lens where it works best. The program tries
each surface in a given range, adding a CC variable and reoptimizing
each time. The lowest merit function then tells you where you can
gain the most from adding an aspheric surface.
Bugs Fixed:
1. The CAP listing, which displays an asterisk for surfaces that
have been assigned EFILE edges, put that asterisk in the wrong column
if the surface did not have a hard aperture.
2. The longitudinal spherical aberration plot (LSA) came back
with the wrong sign.
_________________________________________________________________
Version
13.67
The update to version 13.67 incorporates the
following changes:
Features:
1. A new feature will monitor how close rays
are to the critical angle as they enter or exit from a lens. If
they are too close, several problems can arise, all of them bad, and it
is therefore a good idea to avoid the problem in the first place.
The feature uses the mnemonic ACA. It will monitor all surfaces
whose curvature is varying.
2. Another feature can monitor all default clear apertures in the
lens and keep them under a desired target value. This is a good
tool when you want your lens to fit inside some enclosure and
can’t predict which element will want to get too large.
This one is called AAC. It will monitor all surfaces in the lens,
not just those varying.
3. The five automatic monitoring features (ACE, ACC, ASC, ACA,
and AAC) have an enhanced format, and the definition of the error has
been redefined. Now, you specify a target and weight, as before,
and also a window dimension. If the parameter is within the
target (or more than, depending on the feature) the error is
zero. If it is on the wrong side of that target, the penalty
increases quadratically at a rate such that it equals the weight if the
error is just equal to the window size. Thus there is no penalty
if things are within your limits. Before, the penalty began to be
applied close to the limit, even if the lens was within those limits.
4. A major new feature has been added; this is the saddle-point
build program (SPB). It works with input similar to that of the
design search program DSEARCH, but instead of using a binary search
procedure to find potential starting configurations, it adds elements
to a current lens, if any, by means of saddle-point theory, developed
by Florian Bociort. This is a powerful way to see where you
should add one or more elements to your lens. Read about this
interesting feature in Section 10.14.
Bugs Fixed:
1. Tracing a ray through a roof prism with XEN exactly equal to
zero was erratic. The ray then had no way of telling which side
of the roof it was supposed to hit first. Now, the program will
not allow a zero value, and will change the XEN into an extremely small
but nonzero value if necessary. So things are consistent and
sensible.
_________________________________________________________________
Version 13.66
The
update to version 13.66 incorporates the
following changes:
Features:
1. A new command DMIRROR will create a
duplicate system following your lens, with all of the surfaces
reversed. This lets you model a situation where light reflects
from an image surface and comes back through the lenses again.
Normally this would require the nonsequential mode, which is tricky to
set up and runs slowly. Now it can be sequential, in the form of
a tunnel diagram, which is simpler and traces much faster. The
duplicates are linked by pickups to the original system, so they follow
any design changes.
2. Key F3 now serves as an undo for lens changes. The
previous sequence (Ctrl + U) still works too, but some users are more
used to the former. So we added it.
3. A new switch will cause most ray-grid features to generate a
hexapolar array instead of a square array. This is switch 90.
4. The IR material CLEARTRAN has been added to the U
catalog. Also, the transmission data have been
revised. We realized that the catalog values for
transmission which we have been using apply to external
transmission. We have now converted most of them to internal
transmission values, which is what they should be.
5. A new feature FSCATTER will calculate the paths of rays
originating at a desired location on a surface. These could
result from a dust particle or a pit, for example. The pattern
can then be viewed in several different ways.
6. The Syntax Summary has been discontinued. This document
originated in the days when SYNOPSYS ran on a VAX and the User’s
Manual was printed on paper. In those days it was a chore to look
up anything and the SS was useful. Today, all of the help files
are available with a few clicks or keystrokes, and the TrayPrompt
automatically looks things up for you. Also, the program has
become much larger over the years, so the SS was itself getting pretty
full and finding anything was no longer as easy as before. So we
will not update or distribute this file anymore.
Bugs Fixed:
1. OPD calculations were not valid for
nonsequential systems where the field point was exactly zero and there
was a reflector in the system.
2. The feathering check is no longer applied in the case of
strange rays. (Rays were vignetted that should not have been.)
3. The feature that reads and converts a Zemax file (ZMC) now
inserts a default GLM glass on surfaces where the glass type is not
found in any of the glass tables and there are no valid data
elsewhere. Before, it came back with an index of zero.
Syntax Summary pages changed:
The SS has been discontinued as of this update.
_________________________________________________________________
Version
13.65
The update to version 13.65 incorporates the
following changes:
Features:
1. Longitudinal spherical aberration can now be
plotted, with the command LSA. This feature is also found in the
MRR dialog.
2. The BELL command now has a form BELL OFF, which turns off the
automatic beeper attached to some commands. (You can also do the
same thing with the “No warning beep” toolbar button.)
3. A new command, FRMS will plot the RMS spot size across the
field.
4. The maximum permitted number of aberrations is increased to
5001. This should accommodate zoom lenses that require correcting
many field points at many zooms.
5. Since it serves little purpose, the automatic listing of the
values of the aberrations in the merit function that shows up at the
start and end of an optimization run has been disabled. This is
especially sensible if you are creating 5001 of them. But the
list can sometimes be useful, so we have assigned a new mode switch,
number 89. If you turn on this switch, you will get the listing
again. (The FINAL and ALIST commands are more often used when you
want to see those values.)
Bugs Fixed:
1. The RPT command did not work properly if it
immediately followed an FCV or DIS command.
Syntax Summary pages changed:
2, 10, 17
_________________________________________________________________
Version
13.64
The update to version 13.64 incorporates the
following changes:
Features:
1. A new selection now appears in the Ready Made
Raysets dialog (in MOM and in the MACro editor). Choice number
eight generates a set of both GNR and GNO aberrations, weighted so that
the relative effects are comparable. One can sometimes get better
correction of aberrations if one controls both transverse rays and OPD
targets, and this is a handy way to set up a good combination.
The weighting is derived from the current F/number.
2. We received some Zemax files from countries in Asia that were
formatted in UNICODE, which we could not read since we only process
ASCII files. Now the ZMC command (to convert those files to RLE
files) can read that format too.
3. The ZMC conversion can also now detect when reverse tilts and
decenters show up in a zmx file, and it will implement them as group
tilts or decenters.
4. The Ohara glass table has been updated with current price and
availability data. 17 new glass types have been added.
5. The onscreen glass map now has a button to
bring up a list of all glasses in the selected table, where you can
quickly view and sort by name, Nd, Vd, and so on – the same
display long available from the spreadsheet SPS. When you select
a glass type and return, that name shows up in the glass name box,
ready to insert into your lens with a single click.
6. You can now open the onscreen glass map with the command MGT,
as well as from PAD and SPS.
7. The grid-distortion plot (GDIS) now defaults to a grid of 31
by 31, and it will temporarily make the field of view circular if it
currently has no skew field defined. Before, you had to change it
yourself.
8. The sorting option in the glass-table list display now sorts
from low to high, which is more intuitive than the previous high-to-low
sort.
9. You can now change the group size assigned to relative tilts
and decenters with the RLE entry SN GROUP NB.
Bugs Fixed:
1. The recent change of glass-table format
disabled the transmission list in the glass-table display.
2. A pickup asymmetries (PAS) with a minus sign (to reverse the
signs) did not work.
3. Putting a real stop on surface 1 (APS –1) sometimes
yielded incorrect results.
4. The MWL command (display lens files with drawings) would crash
if the lens in the file had ray failures and the perspective view was
selected.
5. The legend “VERTICAL” on the GDIS plot was upside
down.
Syntax Summary pages changed:
6, 10, 22, 23
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