Optical Design Software: dbOptic - The Optical Design Database Program

version 3.0 now available !

dbOptic: Optical Design for Personal Computers

Powerful, easy to use optical design software from Sky Scientific. From a single lens or mirror to complex systems with up to 99 surfaces, engineering professionals, students and educators use this software to perform simple ray tracing or solve tough optical engineering, optical system design and imaging problems. dbOptic includes a fully integrated glass catalog and basic lens design library. An optional library of 2,500 additional lenses and systems from major optical manufacturers and suppliers is available at small additional cost.

You can download a free evaluation version of this optical design software and have it running in minutes! dbOptic: Optical Design Software for Windows®.

Features See what's new in version 3 !

dbOptic is easy-to-use, high-performance optical design software with most of the features of applications costing 10 or 20 times as much. In addition to being an excellent resource for optics professionals, this software was developed in consideration of the needs of educators and technical professionals with training in other disciplines.

Features of this optical design software package include ...

Capability to create and analyze systems with up to 99 surfaces including spherical and aspheric surfaces, flats and iris stops.

A fully integrated glass catalog.

A basic library of simple lenses and mirrors, photographic and telescope systems.

Additional Library of Manufacturer's Stock Lens designs is optionally available.

Sort and filter the database to find lenses to meet your requirements.

Real time 2D lens and ray graphics plus ray spot diagrams & encircled energy plots.

Complete design editing capability.

Handles Tilted Surfaces

Import Zemax® (.zmx) Lens Files
Generate Polychromatic spot diagrams.

Imaging of extended objects.

Optimize with powerful optical design tools including Aberration XY Plots, H - Tan U and H' - L Plots.

For single workstations or easy setup on your network for multiple users with a common shared database.

Full Program Documentation, Optical Design Primer and Software Tutorial.

"If other optical design software you have tried leaves you with the impression that a graduate engineering degree is a prerequisite, you will appreciate the power and simplicity of dbOptic."

dbOptic is a comprehensive optical design software program utilizing Microsoft Jet (Access®) Database technology to store, edit, sort, filter and update optical designs and glass catalog data. It can accommodate up to 99 surfaces per design (Rx) and a variety of surface types including spherical, flat ,elliptical, parabolic, hyperbolic, stops (called "Iris" surface type) and surfaces defined by an eighth degree polynomial (Ax² + Bx⁴ + Cx⁶ + Dx⁸).

optical design software ray tracing main design screen

The maximum practical number of prescriptions that can be stored in the database is known only to be "very large", constrained by the programmatic limitations of MS Access®. The maximum physical size of the application database is 1 Gigabyte and approximately 1 million records.

New prescriptions are entered surface-by-surface using a convenient datasheet format with each new surface displayed in the Graphics Window in real time. A fully featured optical design editing capability is included that enables editing individual surfaces, moving and "flipping" surfaces or elements and inserting new surfaces or complete designs from the database. New designs and lens libraries may also be imported into the database. The user may set defaults for new designs which include selection of English (in) or Metric (mm) units, object space medium and object distance and design wavelength in nanometers.

"dbOptic Optical Design Software can provide a quick solution to your immediate optical design and imaging problem."

Users can step through the designs individually in the Rx Grid, with each Rx displayed in the Graphics Window and sort, filter or search for specific designs. For the current prescription, the Trace Menu allows display of spot diagrams and encircled energy plots and ray traces for the computation of aberrations. Aberrations considered include longitudinal and zonal spherical aberration, coma and OSC, chromatic aberration, secondary color, distortion, lateral color and field curvature. Printer output is available for most screens and views. The trace window for a Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope with field flattener lens is shown below. The oblique trace was performed for an object at infinity, 1.5 degrees off axis.

optical design software showing maksutov cassegrain telescope raytracing

The current version of dbOptic offers polychromatic spot diagrams, imaging of extended objects and support for higher monitor screen resolution settings. Spot diagram for a double gauss photographic lens is shown below.

optical design software polychromatic spot diagram for lens design

New prescriptions may be entered or existing ones edited using the convenient datasheet format shown below . . .

inserting a new element using optical design software

A fully-integrated glass catalog is included in the dbOptic optical design software package. . .

For the current prescription, the dbOptic optical design software Trace Menu allows display of spot diagrams and encircled energy plots and ray traces for the computation of aberrations. Aberrations considered include longitudinal and zonal spherical aberration, coma and OSC, chromatic aberration, secondary color, distortion, lateral color and field curvature. Printer output is available for most screens and views.

dbOptic Optical Design Software Trace Screen

dbOptic is NOT an automatic lens design program; however, it comes with a complement of tools which will assist in the optimization of any design. The XY Plot Menu Command allows the plotting of aberration vs surface design parameters, object distance and wavelength. From the plot screen it is possible to reset a parameter for the purpose of reducing the magnitude of an aberration. H'- L and H' - Tan U' plots are also available.

dbOptic, the Optical Design Database Program, contains many more features than can be covered here. For more information . . .

Windows and MS Access are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington
ZEMAX is a registered trademark of Radiant ZEMAX LLC

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