Global design of an off-the-shelf objective lens with no a priori design and macro-enabled optimization

Abstract

. Synthesis of original optical designs is a challenging endeavor for novice lens designers. It is made more difficult when attempting to design a compound lens from off-the-shelf lenses. All but the simplest compound lenses resist ready analysis or understanding from a first-principles approach of geometric optics; however, many optical design packages include powerful optimization algorithms for both local and global searches. Despite the power of these tools, the initial construction of a starting lens and merit function remains crucial to the effective utilization of the optimizer. A workflow is presented for a generic starting design, construction of the merit function, and the optimization for a compound monochromatic objective lens composed only of commercial off-the-shelf lenses. A protocol is defined for the substitution of off-the-shelf lenses into a design with optical elements of arbitrary shape factor. Additionally, the theory and method for optimization of the shape factor via a macro in Zemax OpticStudio are provided to accelerate the substitution protocol and improve search results. The performance of the objective design is presented both before and after the off-the-shelf lens substitution and performance is compared to the design requirements. A tolerance analysis is performed and sensitivity and yield are discussed. The macro, lens design, merit function, and additional supporting code are provided.

Off-the-shelf optical systems design enabled by an evolution strategy: front stop case

“…In summary, figure 5 shows that the main limiting specification for OTS-OS scan lenses is the FOV, and that systems with a fast F/# and values smaller than F/3 represent a great challenge for the algorithm to obtain good combinations. This suggests that the constraint curvature values, curvature shapes and diameters of commercially OTS components are a crucial limiting factor for the generation of high-throughput OTS-OS [22,23,25,26]. In the case of scan lenses, large FOVs and fast F/#s require from optical characteristics that are not covered by OTS-lenses, but for which customized commercially available scan lenses play a key role.…”

“…These approaches aim to explore lens combinations and to automate the design process to provide accessible methods to a novice lens designer. To the best of the authors' knowledge, the combinatorial optimization problem derived from OTS-OS design has been tackled by few works that have used 'brute force' combinatory of the stock lenses [24], iterative combinations assisted with determinist rules [25], or global and local optimizers from commercial available optical design software applied over starting points designs [26]. Although these solutions tackle, in principle, what can be considered as the core goal of OTS-OS design, the combinatorial problem of optimally searching OTS-OS still remains open.…”

“…Although these solutions tackle, in principle, what can be considered as the core goal of OTS-OS design, the combinatorial problem of optimally searching OTS-OS still remains open. The open challenges highlight the dependence of current solutions on specific configurations [24,25] or starting points [26], the long computing times as found in the 'brute force' method [26], and the limited exploration of the combinatorial space of splitting [25] and the global-local optimizers [26] methods.…”