Optica
Introduction
Optica is a new generation of optical design software. It offers unprecedented flexibility and builds upon the enormous repertoire of symbolic, numeric, and graphic capabilities in Mathematica. With its searchable component database of more than 6800 commercial optical parts, you can design optical systems faster than ever before. Yet Optica does not limit you to predefined components, nor constrain you by limited script languages.
Optica has a modular building-block architecture that makes addition of custom components a snap. Aspheric lenses, custom surfaces, resonating cavities, and optical fibers represent just a few of the possibilities, from mundane to exotic. Optica is limited only by your imagination and the vast possibilities of Mathematica. If a component or analysis function doesn't exist in Optica, you have the tools to build it yourself. The simple building-block architecture of Optica also makes it easy to learn.
The power of Optica lies not only in the components of optical systems, but also in the rays themselves. These are full-fledged system objects in their own right. You can tag specific rays with descriptive labels and follow them through a complex system. Optical ray tracing can be sequential or non-sequential. The ray-tracing engine can even perform traces with arbitrary precision, beyond standard machine precision.
Here is just a bit of what you'll find in Optica's vast library of predefined elements:
- 122 optical components
- 38 lenses
- 23 mirrors
- 22 prisms
- 12 light sources
- 22 high-level functions
Optica 3 requires Mathematica 6, 7, or 8 and is compatible with all supported Mathematica platforms.