Calendar

Optics and Photonics
Aug. 26-30, 2007
San Diego, CA
http://spie.org

Introduction to CODE V
Oct. 29-Nov. 2, 2007
Pasadena, California
Click here for details and to enroll

Advanced Topics in CODE V November 5-9, 2007
Pasadena, California
Click here for details and to enroll

Quick Tip – CODE V's User-Defined Surface Feature

CODE V has nearly 20 different built-in surface shapes, ranging from a simple spherical surface to a 30th-order aspheric surface (for a complete list, refer to the table on page 4-62 of the CODE V Reference Manual). However, users sometimes need to model an unusual surface shape not easily defined using the built-in surface shapes. For these types of surfaces, a user-defined surface (UDS) can be used.

CODE V's user-defined surface feature allows users to program a subroutine or CODE V macro to model almost any surface imaginable.  The basic approach is for the UDS to use ray data passed to it by CODE V's ray trace engine to determine the ray-surface intersection point and local surface slope.  There are four types of user-defined surfaces available in CODE V:

UDS – A surface described by a function of the form F(x,y,z) = 0, with 81 variable coefficients available for optimization.

UD1 – Similar to UDS, but supports an unlimited number of variable coefficients.

UD2 – Used to define surfaces that cannot be defined as a single continuous surface, such as faceted reflectors or other segmented surfaces, or where a ray can intersect the surface in more than two places. It has 81 variable coefficients available for optimization.

UD3 – Similar to UD2, but supports an unlimited number of variable coefficients.

User-defined surfaces can be defined using C, FORTRAN, or any other programming language that can be compiled and linked to CODE V.  They can also be defined using CODE V's Macro-PLUS programming language, but ray tracing a Macro-PLUS UDS will be much less efficient than a compiled UDS.

To help you get started, several sample UDS routines are supplied with CODE V, including a Zernike surface, a Fly's Eye array, a Deformable Mirror Device (DMD), a surface with sinusoidal ripple, a Winston-Type Compound Parabolic Concentrator (CPC), an anamorphic asphere extended to the 20th order, and several Fresnel and other faceted surfaces. 

In addition to the examples supplied with CODE V, the ORA Customer Support Web Site (www.oraservice.com) includes a .dll file that can be used to model a surface using non-uniform rational B-spline (NURB) data. You can download the .dll and associated files, including user instructions, under CODE V Support > Macro and User-Defined Feature Downloads.

For more information about user-defined surfaces in CODE V, please refer to the CODE V Reference Manual, beginning on page 1-89.

Updates to ORA's Customer Support Web Site

The following additions have been recently made to ORA's Customer Support Web Site, www.oraservice.com, under CODE V Support:

• The April issue of CODE V Enews, which featured a tip on using CODE V tolerancing to reduce production costs, has been added under CODE V Enews & Tips.

• New lens modeling FAQs, including ones on modeling Fresnel lenses, cone-shaped surfaces, and deformable mirror devices, have been added under Tech Support FAQs.

• An updated copy of NEWGLASSPRV.SEQ, which contains Private Catalog definitions of glasses not yet in the CODE V glass catalog, has been added under Macros & User-defined Feature Downloads.  This new version includes the addition of Sumita catalog glass K-PSFn214.

• An optional survey has been added to the Customer Support Web Site. When you exit the site, you will be asked if you would like to participate in a brief survey regarding your experience.  We're interested in your feedback so that we can continue to make improvements to this site.