[HN Gopher] Online Lens/Optics Simulator ___________________________________________________________________ Online Lens/Optics Simulator Author : herodotus Score : 83 points Date : 2023-02-24 16:18 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (opticexplorer.sharedigm.com) (TXT) w3m dump (opticexplorer.sharedigm.com) | twic wrote: | Almost all of the camera lenses have moving parts, for focusing | and possibly zooming. Is there any way to reproduce that movement | in this tool? | formerly_proven wrote: | Doesn't seem like it, though Bill Claff's tool, the lens | database of which is used here, can: | https://www.photonstophotos.net/GeneralTopics/Lenses/Optical... | RobotToaster wrote: | Interesting, does it have a solver? | | Shame it isn't open source, something like this that could be | iterated on would be huge. | analognoise wrote: | Beam4 is available as fully open source optics software: | | https://www.stellarsoftware.com/ | RobotToaster wrote: | Wow, the interface looks like it's from the 80's | mastax wrote: | This is awesome! I spent a lot of time looking for a tool just | like this and didn't find it. I've designed some simple-ish | optical systems and I've been really frustrated by having trouble | visualizing how different elements of the system will affect the | light (especially moving parts). Also frustrating to have to | calculate positions manually, etc. All the tools I could find | were high-end quantum-optical simulators that cost more than my | salary. | mastax wrote: | It looks like it doesn't support mirrors or things like right | angle prisms. Mostly targeting camera lenses, it seems. Not | super useful to me at the moment. I'll be watching with | interest. | txg wrote: | Have you got any recommendations for open-source, or free, | optics design software? | qwezxcrty wrote: | No. There just isn't. It's a shame there are so many wheels | for artistic rendering ray tracing with amazing | performance, but simply no one bothered to invert camera as | sources and objects as detectors, add more geometry and a | tiny bit more of physics, and make a opensource non- | sequential ray tracing engine suitable for optics design. | | Commercial tools like Zemax cost a leg (> $13k, and they | were changing to subscriptions even before being bought by | ANSYS) and have a rather steep learning curve. There are | newcomers like COMSOL offering a ray tracing toolbox, | haven't tried but they are offering generous free trials | and the price seems to be more reasonable. | | Edit: maybe the abadonware Beam4 mentioned by another post | worth trying. | mastax wrote: | No, I never found anything satisfactory. I ended up using | SOLIDWORKS with some 3D sketch lines and reflection | constraints to approximate it. | euoia wrote: | What sort of thing have you designed? I'm curious what the real | world uses are for these sorts of tools. | mastax wrote: | It was a kind of laser scanning instrument, for my job. | Measuring the intensity of reflected light. Don't want to get | into it too much. | samstave wrote: | Stealthy answer | _flux wrote: | So I'm quite uninformed on the topic, but why can't modern path | tracing raytracers do this? They don't help with calculating | positions, though, but might they still be suitable for | checking the results? | zokier wrote: | You might be interested in reading https://benedikt- | bitterli.me/tantalum/ | dekhn wrote: | The other good, free simulator I've used is | https://phydemo.app/ray-optics/ although I've struggled to get it | to do anything real because it doesn't seem to allow you to set | the focal length of lenses except by editing their sizes/shapes. | | I like to crank the # of rays way, way up and then sort of move | lenses around to visualize somethign I'm working on the optical | table. | smartscience wrote: | +1 for also looking for a tool like this (online or otherwise) | before, and being disappointed with what I found previously. Two | projects immediately spring to mind: firstly, we have a | theodolite to align some lab equipment, which I'd like to add a | live digital camera to, and secondly we're designing a material | heating system based on halogen tubes, for which we need to | optimise the shapes of reflectors around the bulbs, subject to | some geometry constraints. | | I'd not seen the sharedigm.com platform before either, possibly | itself also interesting for other things. | iamthepieman wrote: | Got so excited when I saw this as I was recently trying to design | a simple optics setup for focusing an infared light source into a | collimated beam. | | Unfortunately the components seem very limited and there's no | option to create your own custom ones by inputting surface, | refractive and reflective characteristics and geometry. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-02-25 23:00 UTC)