[HN Gopher] Online Lens/Optics Simulator
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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.
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