2007-12-22

LightTools-v6.0 With SR2


LightTools 6.0 Delivers Expanded Modeling and Optimization Capabilities

LightTools® 6.0, a major new release of the leading illumination design and analysis software from Optical Research Associates (ORA®), delivers an even broader set of system modeling tools and further improves its unique and powerful optimization capabilities. For example, LightTools now includes a user-defined optical properties feature that provides tremendous flexibility in creating specialty optical components. This allows modeling of application-specific, proprietary elements such as specialty polarization components, grating components (with efficiency calculations), scattering surfaces (including anamorphic scatterers) and coating definitions. In addition, LightTools 6.0 allows modeled elements to be immersed in one another in multiple levels – a capability needed for modeling the embedded phosphor and epoxy covering in an encapsulated LED, for example.

The LightTools optimization module, available in beta form in previous LightTools releases, has already proven to be a widely applicable feature that can automatically find optimal illumination design solutions, saving the designer days or even weeks of effort that might be needed to manually explore the design space. LightTools 6.0 brings the first formal release of the optimizer and expands it in several important ways. In particular, it now permits optimization of a given illumination distribution (e.g., uniform or Gaussian) while simultaneously maximizing optical power. LightTools also adds functionality for evaluating how sensitive a system is to variations in specific parameters. This can be useful for selecting variables before beginning optimization, and even enables some basic tolerance analysis computations.

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