Getting Started & FAQ
Articles in this section are designed to help new users get up-and-running with Ansys Zemax OpticStudio. These articles will introduce you to OpticStudio's interface or will focus on how optical concepts are implemented in the program. This section also lists solutions to common questions across all experience levels.
- Troubleshooting UI issues in OpticStudio
- Understanding paraxial ray tracing
- Understanding Sobol sampling
- Useful optical simulation methods in illumination design
- Using Project Directories to organize OpticStudio files
- What are filter strings and how to use them?
- What are the .ZDA and .CFG Files?
- What computer should I buy to run OpticStudio?
- What does the sampling correspond to in wavefront-based calculations?
- What does “not enough segments allocated to trace all possible ray paths” mean?
- What is a Point Spread Function?
- What is a ray?
- What is the "reference temperature" of a material?
- What is the difference between the FFT and Huygens PSF?
- What is the normalization radius?
- What scattering models are available in OpticStudio?
- What to do if the graphics windows in OpticStudio are black or blank
- Why are FFT and Huygens MTF results different on tilted image surfaces?
- Why do rays trace behind a fold mirror surface?
- Why doesn’t OS use all available memory and cores when optimizing or tolerancing?
- Why is the optical performance sometimes different at the Image surface versus a co-located surface?
- Why is the RMS spot size listed in Spot Diagram different than the values reported by RSCE and RSRE operands?
- Why my Black box model does not work properly in mirror space?
- Zemax file extensions
- Zemax Messages Window