Calendar

SPIE Photonics West 2009
Jan. 24-29, 2009
Booth 615
San Jose, California
Visit SPIE Web site

SPIE Defense, Security, & Sensing
April 14-16, 2009
Booth 1037
Orlando, Florida
Visit SPIE Web site

Introduction to CODE V
April 20-24, 2009
Pasadena, California
See details or enroll

Advanced Topics in CODE V
April 27-May 1, 2009
Pasadena, California
See details or enroll

For a complete list of CODE V events worldwide, visit our Web site:

• USA
• Asia
• Europe

Quick Tips From CODE V Tech Support

Here are a few quick tips that have come up recently in CODE V Tech Support:

Reflection from a Bare Glass – If you need to simulate Fresnel losses from a bare glass in a non-sequential surface (NSS) setup such as a light pipe, you can do the following:

1. Set the refract mode of the bare glass surface to reflect (RMD REFL). 
2. Define a CODE V Multi-layer coating (MUL option) that is identical in index to the glass that defines the light pipe.
3. Attach the MUL coating file to each bare glass surface (MLT Sk filename.mul). 

Now ray tracing will properly handle this surface in CODE V's Transmission (TRA) analysis and Illumination (LUM) analysis (be sure to activate polarization ray tracing, POL Y, in LUM).

Flat Surfaces – Don't use a large radius when you really want a flat surface.  You may think that 1.0e12 might be a good value to use, but it may cause unexpected answers, especially on the object surface.  For a flat surface, enter a radius (RDY) of 0.  CODE V will interpret a 0 radius as infinite and model a truly flat surface.  Of course you can always enter a 0 curvature (CUY) as well.

Error Log Preferences – The default behavior of the Error Log window is to pop to the front whenever an error messages is delivered by CODE V.  However, this behavior can be controlled by the user so that the Error Window pops up Never, on Errors Only (default), or on both Errors and Warnings.  To do this, use Tools > Preferences..., click the UI tab, and select the behavior you prefer under Error Log Auto Launch:

If you turn off the automatic launching of the error window, errors will still be sent to it, as well as to the command window, but it will no longer pop to the front.

Defining an Ideal Image Point – CODE V's chief ray aiming (CRA command or Lens > System Data > Reference Ray Aiming) is normally used to specify a non-default chief ray for a particular field (i.e., one that does not go through the center of the aperture stop surface), or to provide more information to help the chief ray iteration find the center of the aperture stop.  It defines a new chief ray which hits a specified surface at the desired coordinates, starting the iteration from aim points specified on the tangent plane to surface 1.  However, if chief ray aiming is defined on the image surface, it does not change the chief ray trace.  Instead, it defines an "ideal image location."  In this special case, the user-defined point on the image is used as the chief ray image location and as the center of the OPD reference sphere for all options, including diffraction analysis options.

If you have any quick tips you'd like to share with other users, we'd love to hear from you.  Send your tips to service@opticalres.com.

Updates to the Customer Area of the Web

Two new macros from ORA Tech Support have been added to CODE V Support > Macro and User-defined Feature Downloads > Macros from ORA Tech Support:

• del_for_aut.seq - A macro that lists ray data for various DEL values used during optimization
• spotrms.seq - A macro that defines a function that returns the RMS spot size on a specific surface. Can be used to constrain the spot size during optimization