Abstract

The use of spreadsheet programs (Lotus [1], Excel [2], etc.) as an optical design and production fabrication tool is reviewed. The common problem of melt and thickness recalculation prior to assembly is demonstrated using two approaches: (1) the spreadsheet preprocesses and writes a file for batch processing by a commercial optical design program, and (2) the spreadsheet uses matrix algebra and a partial derivative matrix to compute the respacing without any additional ray tracing.

© 1994 Optical Society of America