Abstract

Progressive addition lens surfaces are complex aspheric in form. Being non-rotationally symmetrical can make their analysis difficult. Much of the literature on their design is found in patents, which vary considerably in their information content. The starting point for this discussion arose out of a requirement to be able to demonstrate the design of PALs to optometry students, many of whom have limited mathematical background. The idea was to produce a computer program that would rapidly produce mean sphere and cylindrical error plots with the minimum of input parameters, so that different lens design concepts could be demonstrated very quickly. To this aim, three strategies have been used, with varying degrees of success.

© 1995 Optical Society of America