New OpticStudio 20.2: New functionality brings early design insights

20 May 2020

Latest release improves team efficiency by up to 50% by enabling optical engineers to quickly check how their design decisions impact the performance and manufacturability of the product.

KIRKLAND, WASHINGTON—Zemax announced the latest release of their flagship software, OpticStudio®. OpticStudio 20.2 represents the second of three releases in 2020. Throughout the year, these releases will provide significant advances in optical manufacturability, tolerancing, freeform design and more. OpticStudio 20.2 is focused on advancing freeform design and improving manufacturability by delivering tolerancing insights early in the design phase.

“OpticStudio 20.2 is a milestone release that connects new features into an exceptional workflow that allows optical engineers to better design for manufacturability,” said, Dr. S. Subbiah, Chief Executive Officer of Zemax. “Whether you are a long-time customer or new to OpticStudio, this release comes at a pivotal time when engineering teams are focused on efficiency and delivering new innovations to an evolving marketplace. Now more than ever, Zemax is centered on strengthening the optics industry by delivering technology that helps designers create better products while minimizing production costs.”

Design for Manufacturability
When designing optical products, optical engineers need to balance what is theoretically possible with what is manufacturable at-scale. Traditional optical design methods have forced engineers to first design for an optimized nominal performance, then tolerance their system to account for manufacturing limitations. Oftentimes, these two steps are inversely correlated. Optimizing towards perfection creates designs that are more sensitive to manufacturing error, while tolerancing for a high manufacturing yield often dulls the fidelity and performance of the optical product. Optical engineers are forced to oscillate between these two steps to continually rework designs until they can balance performance with manufacturability.

OpticStudio 20.2 combines new tolerancing features like Quick Yield and Tolerance Data Analyses to establish a new workflow that delivers early design insights, enabling designers to more easily balance performance with manufacturability. With early tolerancing insights, optical engineers can confidently assess if they are meeting their manufacturing requirements and swiftly change course early in the design process if their projects need further modifications. This new manufacturability workflow empowers optical engineers to create systems that are more manufacturable and improves their efficiency by upwards of 50%.

Improved Freeform Design
Based on industry-leading techniques and work done by cutting-edge optical designers, OpticStudio 20.2 makes state-of-the-art parametric freeform surfaces readily available to all users. With the introduction of TrueFreeForm™ in OpticStudio 20.1, an industry-first freeform design capability, 20.2 adds new capabilities by allowing freeform designers to constrain their TrueFreeForm designs for symmetry, enabling users to rapidly produce the correct lens geometry.

About Zemax
Zemax’s industry-leading optical product design and simulation software, OpticStudio®, OpticsBuilder™, and OpticsViewer™, helps optical, mechanical, and manufacturing engineering teams turn their ideas into reality. Standardizing on Zemax software reduces design iterations and repeated prototypes, speeding time to market and reducing development costs. Zemax is headquartered in the Kirkland, Washington, area and has offices in the UK, Japan, Taiwan, and China.

For more information: www.Zemax.com