Summary of NSC Objects
OpticStudio NSC object types include ellipses, triangles, rectangles, spheres, cylinders, and other basic shapes. Complex objects such as arbitrary prisms, aspheric lenses, torics, toruses, and other optical components are also available. The reflective, refractive, and absorptive properties of these objects are determined by the material assigned to the objects.
| Object | Description |
| Annular Aspheric Lens | An annular volume with an aspheric surface on one face. |
| Annular Axial Lens | An annular lens formed by sweeping an aspheric cross section about a decentered Z axis. |
| Annular Volume | A volume formed by two tilted, elliptical annular planar faces. |
| Annulus | A planar ellipse with an elliptical hole in the middle. |
| Array | This object creates a 3D parallelogram array of objects based upon a master object. |
| Array Ring | This object creates a ring array of objects based upon a master object. |
| Aspheric Surface | A surface with a conic substrate plus even and odd radial polynomial power aspheric terms. |
| Aspheric Surface 2 | Identical to the Aspheric Surface, with support for more complex aperture types. |
| Axicon Surface | An axicon formed by rotating a spherical arc around the z axis. |
| Biconic Lens | A circular or rectangular lens with separate curvature and conic in the X and Y directions on both front and back faces. |
| Biconic Surface | A surface with separate curvature and conic in the X and Y directions. May be partially hyperhemispheric under special circumstances. |
| Biconic Zernike Lens | A lens with a standard front face and a biconic Zernike rear face. |
| Biconic Zernike Surface | A surface with a biconic Zernike shape. The surface supports elliptical, rectangular, and user apertures, and the biconic and Zernike terms may be separately decentered. |
| Binary 1 | A standard lens with a binary 1 phase profile on the front face. The binary 1 phase profile is an X-Y polynomial. |
| Binary 2 | A standard lens with a binary 2 phase profile on the front face. The binary 2 phase profile is a radial polynomial in even powers of r. |
| Binary 2A | An even aspheric lens (front and back faces) with a binary 2 phase profile on the front face. The binary 2 phase profile is a radial polynomial in even powers of r. |
| Boolean CAD | A very general object defined by a Boolean combination of other CAD objects. |
| Boolean Native | A very general object defined by a Boolean combination of other OpticStudio native objects. |
| CAD Assembly: Autodesk Inventor | A dynamic link to an Autodesk Inventor assembly. |
| CAD Assembly: Creo Parametric | A dynamic link to a Creo Parametric assembly. |
| CAD Part: Autodesk Inventor | A dynamic link to an Autodesk Inventor part. |
| CAD Part: Creo Parametric | A dynamic link to a Creo Parametric part. |
| CAD Part: STEP/IGES/SAT | An object or objects imported from a CAD program in STEP, IGES, or SAT format. |
| CAD Part: STL | A general polygon object defined in STL format, typically exported from a CAD program. |
| CAD Part: OpticStudio Part Designer | An object created using the OpticStudio Part Designer. |
| CPC | A compound parabolic concentrator (CPC). The CPC may be hollow or solid. |
| CPC - Rectangular | A CPC with rectangular symmetry and separate X and Y aperture and acceptance angles. |
| Compound Lens | A very general lens object that supports different surfaces and apertures on the front and back faces. |
| Cone | A section of a cone defined by two points, r and z, which forms a line segment, which is then rotated around the local z axis. |
| Cylinder Pipe | A tapered cylindrical surface shape. |
| Cylinder Volume | A tapered cylindrical volume, with end caps. |
| Cylinder 2 Pipe | A cylindrical surface shape with tilted ends. |
| Cylinder 2 Volume | A cylindrical volume, with tilted end caps. |
| Diffraction Grating | A standard lens with a diffraction grating with constant or variable line spacing on the front face. |
| Dual BEF Surface | An idealized dual brightness enhancement film surface |
| Ellipse | A planar ellipse. |
| Elliptical Volume | An elliptical volume (or shell). The shape is a tapered cylinder with an elliptical cross section. |
| Even Asphere Lens | A rotationally symmetric lens with up to 16th order aspheres on both the front and back faces. |
| Extended Odd Asphere Lens | A lens with extended odd asphere surfaces on the front and back faces. |
| Extended Polynomial Lens | A lens with extended polynomial surfaces on front and back faces. |
| Extended Polynomial Surface | A surface with an extended polynomial shape. |
| Extruded | A solid volume formed by extruding a User Defined Aperture. |
| Faceted Surface | A standard surface faceted into flat polygons. |
| Freeform Z | A solid lens or shell defined by rotating a spline curve around the Z axis. The spline curve is defined by points along the Z axis. |
| Fresnel 1 | A true Fresnel lens, either radial or cylindrical, defined in terms of a number of construction parameters. |
| Fresnel 2 | An idealized Fresnel lens object having a circular or rectangular shape, with one face an ideal Fresnel lens with either radial or cylindrical polynomial aspheric terms over a base conic asphere. |
| Grid Sag Lens | A lens with a standard front face and grid sag rear face. |
| Grid Sag Lens 2 | A lens with grid sag front and back faces. |
| Grid Sag Surface | A surface defined by a table of sag points. |
| Hexagonal Lenslet Array | A lenslet array with hexagonal symmetry. |
| Hologram Lens | A circular or rectangular solid with an optically fabricated hologram on the front face. |
| Hologram Surface | A circular or user defined plane, conic, spherical or aspherical surface with an optically fabricated hologram on the face. |
| Jones Matrix | An elliptical flat object which supports 8 ABCD parameters which can be use to model neutral density filters, polarizers, rotators, and other arbitrary Jones Matrix type objects. |
| Lenslet Array 1 | A rectangular shaped lens array object with a curved back face. This object may be diffractive. |
| Lenslet Array 2 | A rectangular shaped lens array object with curved front and back faces. |
| Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) | An array of flat faces (intended to be made of material "MIRROR") where the individual faces may be tipped about any of 3 angles. The faces may be addressed either by rows, by columns, or by individual pixels. |
| Null Object | A non-existent object. This is the default when new objects are inserted into the NSC Editor, and is handy to use as a place holder. |
| Odd Asphere Lens | A rotationally symmetric lens with up to 12th order odd and even power aspheres on both the front and back faces. |
| Off-axis Mirror | A conic mirror with an off-axis aperture. |
| Paraxial Lens | An idealized planar surface that acts like a thin lens with separable powers. |
| Polygon Object | A user defined general polygon object which may be open or closed, and may have refractive, reflective, or absorptive faces, or a mixture of these types of faces. |
| Q-type Asphere Surface | An asphere based upon the Forbes polynomials. |
| Ray Rotator | An imaginary component that rotates incident rays in two directions. |
| Rectangular Corner | A corner composed of 3 rectangular surfaces. |
| Rectangle | A rectangle defined by a width and height. |
| Rectangular Pipe | A four sided box. |
| Rectangular Pipe Grating | A four sided box with a grating on the side faces. |
| Rectangular Roof | A roof composed of two rectangular surfaces meeting at an angle. |
| Rectangular Torus Surface | A section of a rectangular torus which defines a surface; open at the ends. |
| Rectangular Torus Volume | A section of a rectangular torus with closed ends to define a volume. |
| Rectangular Volume | A six sided box enclosing a volume. |
| Rectangular Volume Grating | A six sided box with a diffraction grating on side faces. |
| Slide | A color RGB file, in either BMP, JPG, or PNG format. The slide may be scaled to any size and aspect ratio, and may be used to filter a source to create colored image sources. |
| Sphere | A sphere. |
| Standard Lens | A 5 surface lens object with two Standard faces, two flat edges, and a cylindrical outer edge. |
| Standard Surface | A surface with the same shape as the OpticStudio Standard surface (a plane, sphere, conic asphere, or hyperhemisphere). |
| Swept Object | A surface or volume formed by sweeping the cross section of another object around an arbitrary axis through an angle. |
| Tabulated Faceted Radial | A faceted object generated from a table of coordinates rotated about the local z axis. This object type can be used to define surfaces or volumes. |
| Tabulated Faceted Toroid | A faceted object generated from a table of coordinates rotated about an axis parallel to the local y axis. This object type can be used to define surfaces which are cylindrical or toroidal. |
| Tabulated Fresnel Radial | A smooth Fresnel lens generated from a table of coordinates. This is very similar to the Tabulated Faceted Radial object except the surfaces are smooth, not faceted. See also the Fresnel object. |
| Toroidal Hologram | A circular, elliptical, or rectangular lens with aspheric toroidal surfaces on the front and back sides, and a hologram on the front face. |
| Toroidal Lens | A circular, elliptical, or rectangular lens with aspheric toroidal surfaces on the front and back sides. |
| Toroidal Surface | A rectangular surface with an aspheric toroidal shape. |
| Toroidal Surface Odd Asphere | A rectangular surface with an aspheric toroidal shape. Includes odd asphere terms up to y8. |
| Torus Surface | A section of a torus which defines a surface; open at the ends. |
| Torus Volume | A section of a volume torus; like a surface but with end caps to enclose a volume. |
| Triangular Corner | A corner composed of 3 triangles. |
| Triangle | A triangle defined by 3 points in a plane. |
| User Defined Object | An object defined by a user provided DLL. |
| Wolter Surface | A radially symmetric shell object used in x-ray telescopes. |
| Zernike Surface | A surface defined by radial aspheric and standard Zernike polynomial sag terms. |
Each NSC object type is described in the following summary list, and in greater detail in the following sections. Note these basic objects may be combined to form more complex objects. See "Object Placement" for information on placing objects inside or adjacent to one another.
If an object type is required that is not listed, please contact technical support to suggest the new object type be added to OpticStudio.
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