Abstract

A modular computer program for the design and analysis of optical systems on a small computer has been developed under the name "Opdesign". While the origins date back into the late seventies and the use of BASIC on, successively, programmable calculators and 8-bit home computers, the current program is written in 'C' and runs on different types of personal computers. Concurrently, the speed of calculations, in particular a skew-ray tracing, went up from one ray surface per second to 30..60 ray surfaces per second depending on the compiler and the hardware. With a program size (executable code) in excess of 250 kByte, the package covers system data (input, general properties), aberration calculation (third order-, wavefront-, exact ray aberrations), a number of tools for design manipulations, and automatic design improvement (by damped least squares method).

© 1990 Optical Society of America