dbOptic: Optical Design Software for Personal Computers

dbOptic is easy-to-use, high-performance optical design software with most of the features of high-end optics software, yet at a small fraction of the cost. 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
  • Create designs using multiple surface types including spherical, aspheric, 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
  • Imaging of extended objects
  • Import Zemax® (.zmx) Lens Files
  • Optimize with powerful 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).

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 Graphics Screen

“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.

Trace of Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope

dbOptic offers polychromatic spot diagrams, encircled energy plots and imaging of extended objects. Spot diagram for a double gauss photographic lens is shown below.

Polychromatic Spot Diagram

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

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

dbOptic software glass catalog

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

Raytracing with Tilted Surfaces . . .

dbOptic tilted-surface trace

Spot Diagrams . . .

spot diagram

and Encircled Energy Plots . . .

encircled energy

Unique "Double-Star Test" . . .

double star test

The XY Plot Menu Command allows the plotting of aberration vs surface design parameters, object distance or wavelength. The red plot below shows how system spherical aberration LA' varies with radius of curvature of surface number 4, the primary mirror of a 1000 mm focal length telephoto mirror lens. The horizontal gray line represents LA' = 0 (fully corrected). The horizontal green lines represent the allowable tolerance values. The short red vertical bar represents the system as currently designed with R4 equal to about -419mm. The plot below clearly shows that while LA' is within the allowed tolerance, it could be reduced further by flattening the surface slightly to about R = -423mm.

xy plot

Imaging of Extended Objects

Similar to using a single point as the object for generating a spot diagram, we can also consider an array of object points at the same finite or non-finite object distance and create a composite spot diagram at the image plane. The composite image of this "object map" provides a near-realistic view of the image that a candidate optical system might generate:

Extended objects

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.

dbOptic, the Optical Design Database Program, contains many more features than can be described here. Try our optical design software before you buy it. Download the FREE Evaluation Version and have it running in a few minutes. If the dbOptic software meets with your approval, order the License Activation Key that will transform your installed application into the full-feature licensed version of dbOptic. The download includes complete program documentation and a software tutorial.

   
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