Native Object

Native objects are parametric objects that are built into the Non-sequential Component Editor. OpticStudio uses a relative internal optical precision of about 10^-12 for ray tracing to native objects.

When non-native objects, such as STEP files, are imported into OpticStudio, its surfaces are defined with Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS). The NURBS surface form cannot model surfaces to arbitrary precision, but conic aspheres are represented exactly. Therefore, the NURBS representation is accurate for spheres, ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas, but not for higher-order surface shapes. In addition, NURBS representations require more memory than native objects, and thus more time to render and raytrace.

Note that the OpticStudio documentation also references "native CAD files" which are different from "native objects" as defined here. Native CAD files are part and assembly file formats that are native to their originating CAD software. Examples of native CAD files are Autodesk Inventor part files (*.IPT) and Creo Parametric part files (*.PRT). OpticStudio uses a NURBS representation for all CAD parts.