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Chapter 9
Zoom Systems

Zoom systems are actually multi-configuration systems. Nearly any parameter can
take on different values across a series of positions (up to 99). These range from air
spaces only (“true zoom”) to tilt angles in a scanning system.

Contents

Zoom Capabilities.....................................................................................................204
A Scanning Example ................................................................................................211
Zoom Features in Options ........................................................................................219
Multi-Spectral Systems.............................................................................................222

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Zoom Capabilities
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CODE V’s Zoom capability is one of its most powerful features. It was developed
originally to design photographic zoom lenses, but it has been expanded into a true
multi-configuration modeling capability. Thanks to this flexibility, new uses for
Zoom are constantly being discovered. Here is a partial list of typical uses.
• True zooms (changing air spaces only)
• Scanning systems
• Multiple-conjugate optimization
• Multiple eye positions for display systems
• Flip in/out attachments or alternate elements
• Spectrally beam-divided systems
With very few exceptions, any aspect of a lens description may be zoomed. (The
major exception is wavelength, but wavelength weights and the reference
wavelength can be zoomed to give the effect of zoomed wavelengths.) Any zoom
lens starts out as a normal, single-configuration lens. You then use the Zoom
features of the LDM to specify the number of positions (including the first, or
nominal, position), and the values that each zoomed parameter will have in each
zoom position. Parameters not identified as zoomed input will have the same value
in all zoom positions.

Simultaneous Optimization
Simultaneous optimization of all zoom positions is the most fundamental advantage
of zoom (since in principle, everything else could be done sequentially, by changing
parameters and repeating the analysis, perhaps with the help of a macro).
Optimization cannot be done sequentially, since a change of any non-zoomed
parameter will more than likely affect all the zoom positions. Optimization is
further supported by having constraints and weights which can take on separate
values for each zoom position.

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User Controls
Search The user interface provides a zoom spinner (shown below) on the toolbar that lets
you select any zoom position you wish to display, and see and edit all data for that
position in all program screens (full zoom data for any parameter is just a
right-click away).

You can also display the Zoom System dialog box (Lens > Zoom Lens menu),
which allows you to insert or delete zoom positions. You can also dezoom to a
particular position, which creates a non-zoom lens (and throws away the other
positions' data, though you always have Undo and hopefully a saved lens file as a
backup). The term dezoom also applies to individual parameters (when a parameter
is dezoomed, only the value from the first zoom position, or Z1, is retained—this
can be done by right-clicking on any zoomed LDM parameter and choosing
Dezoom). CODE V also includes a very convenient Zoom Data review
spreadsheet (Review > Zoom Data menu), where all zoomed parameters can be
viewed and modified in one place.
When a zoom lens is analyzed, most CODE V options produce their standard
outputs for each active zoom position, as if each position were a completely
separate lens. You can override this, however, and prevent options from analyzing
every zoom position by defining the active positions with the LDM’s zoom position
controls (or the POS command). Use of zoom features in option input and output
will be discussed later in this chapter, along with a brief look at zoom features in
command entry.

Tip: When you see a zoom symbol (small z glyph) anywhere in the user
interface, LDM or option input, right-click on the zoom symbol and choose
Zoom from the shortcut menu to view or change the values for all the positions
(if you change the displayed value directly, you will only change it for the current
zoom position as indicated by the zoom spinner).

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Movie Zoom Lens

Search Long before 8 mm video, there were 8 mm home movie cameras. Many of these
cameras had zoom lenses, and our first example is from an older patent for one such
system. It is a true zoom lens, meaning that only air spaces between groups of
elements are changed between configurations (or zoom positions). This is one of
the CODE V sample lenses, though there are many other true zoom patents
available through the New Lens Wizard or the Patent Search macro (Tools > Patent
Lens Search menu).
1. Choose the File > New menu to launch the New Lens Wizard, and click Next to
bypass the welcome screen.
2. Select CODE V Sample Lens and click Next.
3. Scroll down to locate the lens file cv_lens:movie.len and click on it, then click
Next.
4. Go through the next several screens, noting the system data defined for this lens
and clicking Next on each one. Click Done on the last screen.

In particular, note that the fields are defined as paraxial image height. This is
common for true zoom lenses since it keeps the film or detector (image) format
fixed while the focal length changes. This allows the field angles in object space
to change implicitly with zoom, from telephoto to wide angle (field angles can
also be explicitly zoomed if desired).
5. Choose the Display > View Lens menu and click OK (accepting the defaults
for all settings for now).
The View Lens output window is displayed.

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Note that the tabbed output window (TOW) for the View Lens option has three
graphics tabs, one for each zoom position. You can take a look at some other
zoom features for this lens now, starting with the Lens Data Manager spread-
sheet window.

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Note that among the many red V symbols representing variables, there are sev-
eral red Z symbols, indicating zoomed parameters (all air spaces in this case).
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The surface names move1, move2, and move3 have been added—this is often
useful in a lens with many surfaces. The labels are on the surfaces following the
zoomed air spaces, since these are the lens elements that move as the prior
thickness changes (you can put surface names anywhere you like, though every
surface label must be unique since they are aliases for the surface numbers).
6. Right-click on the thickness of surface 6 and choose Zoom from the shortcut
menu.
The Zoom Editor dialog box is displayed.

The Zoom Editor contains the values for this particular thickness, so you can
view and possibly edit it for all zoom positions. Notice that this indicates that
this thickness is variable in positions 2 and 3, but frozen in z1. If you want to
change this, right-click on the value displayed in this dialog box and choose
Vary Parameter.
7. Click OK to close the Zoom Editor dialog box.
8. Choose the Display > List Lens Data > First Order Data menu.
This displays a listing of the first order data for all zoom positions in a text
window (not shown). Note the three values of EFL (effective focal length), 9.4,
20.3, and 35.6 mm for z1, z2, and z3, respectively. Most text output windows
will contain separate tables of data for each active zoom position.

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9. Choose the Lens > Zoom Lens menu to display the Zoom System dialog (or
click the large Z next to the zoom spinner on the tool bar).
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This dialog box is used to establish or change the number of zoom positions, to
determine which positions are active for analysis/output purposes, and to set the
title and color associated with each zoom position. You can insert or delete
zoom positions here, or dezoom to a specific position (select a row and right
click to see the available options).

10. Click on the title for each zoom position and type a new title as shown above,
and change colors if desired (double click a color cell to see a dropdown list of
color choices).
11. Click the Commit Changes button.
It is useful to have some position-specific information in the title since this title
will appear on any graphical output you produce.

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Zoom Review Spreadsheet

Search The Zoom Data review spreadsheet (Review > Zoom Data menu) is extremely
useful in working with zoom systems. Since zoomed parameters can be found
throughout the LDM, it may not be easy to know what you have.
The Zoom Data review spreadsheet lists all the parameters that are zoomed,
allowing you to easily view, compare, and edit these values. As with other
spreadsheets, grayed-out cells are not directly editable. You can select complete
rows to Dezoom or copy parameters, and for any non-gray cells, you can modify
the displayed values or right-click to change the status of a parameter (vary, freeze,
solve, etc.). You can also select a column by clicking the header cell and using
right-click to insert or delete the corresponding zoom position, or to dezoom the
system to that position. You cannot define new zoomed parameters in the Zoom
Data review sheet; that can only be done by locating the parameter in the LDM
spreadsheet or Surface Properties window and using right-click, Zoom.

There is another way to look at all zoom data in a compact format: the Zoom Data
listing (not shown). This is available in the Display > List Lens Data > Zoom
Data menu, which will open it in an updateable (but not editable) text window. The
LDM command for listing zoom data is ZLI SA (SA means all surfaces).
We will return to the movie.len example later in this chapter when we discuss zoom
features in analysis and optimization options.

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A Scanning Example
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This is a follow-up to the discussion in Chapter 8 on modeling scan mirrors.
Scanning systems are most often modeled as zoom lenses with one or more tilt
angles zoomed. We could set up many types of scan lenses, but we will stick to
something relatively simple and place a scanning mirror in front of a doublet,
zooming the scan angle to simulate—you guessed it—scanning!

Start with a Doublet

In this case we will start with a doublet. We aren't looking for great performance,
just a way to simulate scanning.
1. Choose the File > New menu to launch the New Lens Wizard, and click Next to
bypass the welcome screen.
2. Select CODE V Sample Lens and click Next.
3. Scroll down to locate the lens file cv_lens:doublet.len and click on it, then
click Next.
4. On the pupil screen, change the EPD to 20 mm (from around 33 mm). You are
stopping down the lens so it can cover a bigger scanned field (you'll see this in a
minute).
5. On the wavelengths screen, select the rows for wavelengths 2 and 3, right-click,
and choose Delete. Double-click the remaining wavelength and select
HeNe - 632.8 for the only wavelength. Click Next on this screen and the next.
6. On the fields screen, select the rows for fields 2 and 3, right-click, and choose
Delete. In most scan lenses the field of view is simulated by the scan angles, so
only a single field or object point is typically defined. Click Finish.
7. Choose the Display > View Lens menu and click OK for a default lens picture.

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It’s not too exciting; however, it gets better.

Add the Scan Mirror

1. Right-click surface 1 in the LDM spreadsheet and choose Insert. Enter 3 for the
number of surfaces to insert (stop surface, scan mirror, dummy).
2. Right-click surface 1 and choose Set Stop Surface, then enter 20.0 for the
thickness values of both surface 1 and surface 3.
3. Double-click the refract mode of surface 2 and change it to Reflect.
4. Select surfaces 2 through Image, right-click, and choose Scale. Enter -1 for the
scale value and click OK (this changes signs after the reflection).
The LDM spreadsheet should look like this (before defining tilts):

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5. Right-click on surface 2 and choose Surface Properties. In the Surface

Properties window, go to the Decenters page.
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6. Change the Decenter Type to Decenter & Return (DAR) and enter a value of
45 for the Alpha-Tilt value for surface 2 (DAR always returns to the starting
coordinate system after tilting the surface). This is the scan angle that will soon
be zoomed.
7. Change the surface selector at the top of Surface Properties to surface 3 and
change its decenter type to Basic. Enter 90 as the Alpha-Tilt angle (this will
maintain a fixed 90° relationship between the input beam and the image
surface).
8. The system looks like this now. You’re getting there. Now you need to add
scanning. With the DAR surface, this is easy—you only have to change a single
scan value (ADE s2) to simulate scanning.

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Zoom the Scan Angle

Search To access the zoom parameters for anything in CODE V, you first need to find
where the item is displayed (LDM spreadsheet, Surface Properties, option input
dialog box, etc.), right-click the parameter, and choose Zoom from the shortcut
menu. You will now do this with the simple scan lens you have prepared.
1. In the LDM spreadsheet, right-click on the Decenter & Return cell for surface 2
and choose Surface Properties.

2. In the Surface Properties window (Decenters page), right-click on the

Alpha-Tilt field and choose Zoom. Since the system is not yet zoomed,
CODE V will ask if you wish to zoom it; click Yes.

3. In the resulting Zoom System dialog, change the title to 41 Scan Doublet, then
type 5 for the number of zoom positions. This saves a little typing since you can
change just the scan angle for each position's title as shown below (you will be
using scan angles of 41, 43, 45, 47, and 49 degrees). Pick some position colors
too, if you like.

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4. Now go back to the Decenters page of the Surface Properties window for
surface 2 and right-click again and choose Zoom for the Alpha-Tilt angle. This
time the Zoom Editor dialog box is displayed, so you can actually define the 5
scanned tilt values.
5. Enter the five Alpha Tilt values as shown below and click OK.

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6. Click the Recalculate button in your View Lens window to redraw the lens. You
will now have 5 plot tabs on the output window, one for each zoom position.
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If you closed this window, just choose the Display > View Lens menu and click
OK.

Overlaying Zoom Positions in Lens Drawings

The default output from VIEW (and most options) produces a single plot for each
zoom position. While this is useful, in some systems, it can be helpful to overlay
multiple zoom positions on a single lens drawing, to see how the zoom positions
interact. This is easy to do. It makes use of the ability to return the “virtual pen” to
its starting point when each zoom position is plotted (think of each plot window as
a small pen plotter).
1. Choose the Display > View Lens menu, and click the Title/Offsets tab.
2. Right-click the Return Pen to Origin checkbox and choose Zoom from the
shortcut menu.
3. In the Zoom Editor, click the box for Z1, click the Replicate Z1 Value button,
then uncheck the box for the last zoom position (Z5). This will force all zooms
to be drawn on the same “page” (the unchecked last position allows the virtual
pen to move on to another window for any subsequent plotting). Click OK.

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4. Click the Overlay zoom pos. at surface no. radio button, then double-click the
Surface cell in row 1 and choose Stop (surface 1). The screen capture shown
above shows this step being done (the order doesn’t matter). Click OK.

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This picture shows all five zoom positions and illustrates how the scan mecha-
nism works. You can see that the default apertures have been calculated to pass
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rays from all zoom positions. Note that it is also useful to have each zoom posi-
tion plot in a different color. Although most of the lens is exactly overlaid (as it
should be), showing only the color of Z5, you can actually identify the positions
of the scan mirror by their colors (zoom in with the magnifier tool to see this).

Tip: There is an ORA-supplied macro called QuickView.seq that can overlay

zoom positions and do other common operations from a simple dialog box
(one-stop shopping). This is a good macro to assign to a toolbar. Choose the
Tools > Macro Manager menu and browse for quickview.seq in the cv_macro:
directory, then click Assign to Toolbar.

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Zoom Features in Options

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Zoom Controls for Calculations

In most CODE V options, zoom systems are treated very much like several
independent non-zoom lenses. For example, MTF will be calculated for each active
zoom position and separate tables and plots will be produced in the text tab. Zoom
can therefore be an important compute-time consideration for complex lenses, and
you should be aware of the number of zoom positions that are active. Use the Zoom
System dialog to set the active positions. This applies to all options other than
AUTO (optimization). In the example below, zoom positions 2 and 4 have been
turned off, and you can see that these scan angles are missing from the overlaid
VIEW drawing (in commands, POS Y N Y N Y will do the same thing). Note that
all zoom positions (active or not) are considered when tracing reference rays for
determining default apertures.

Note that the intermediate scan angles are missing from the lens drawing.

Zoomed Values for Settings/Commands

In CODE V options, most screen settings and their associated commands can take
on multiple values in a zoomed system, one for each zoom position. If you don't
make a change to a particular setting or command, its default value can normally be
used for all zoom positions. If you change a setting, however, it's important to
note that this change will only affect the current zoom position as shown on the
zoom spinner. If you want to change a setting for any or all zoom positions, you
must use the right-click Zoom method to open the Zoom Editor. This was shown in
the last section where you overlaid zoom positions with the Return feature in the
VIEW option.

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Search Tip: When you see a Z symbol on any parameter, right-click and choose Zoom
from the shortcut menu to view and change its values.

Commands work a little differently in this respect. When you type inputs in the
Command Window, you can type all the values for a zoomed parameter, and if they
are different, you will have to do this. For example, assuming a three-position zoom
system, in the MTF option you could enter:
MFR 100 75 50 ! maximum frequency values for Z1, Z2, Z3
But if you wish to use 100 for all three zoom positions, you could use the shortcut
of typing only one value:
MFR 100 ! maximum frequency of 100 applied to Z1, Z2, Z3
This and other syntax issues for command use are described in detail in the
CODE V Reference Manual, Chapter 13, Defining Zoom Systems.

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Automatic Design and Zoom Systems

Search AUTO optimizes all zoom positions simultaneously, but you can control specific
constraints and error function weights for each zoom position (general constraints
apply to all positions). Consider the movie lens example used at the start of this
chapter (open or restore cv_lens:movie.len). If you optimize this lens, you will
need to control the effective focal length independently in each zoom position,
since there are zoomed air spaces that can change the focal length. In Automatic
Design input, you will need to insert the EFL for each zoom position as a separate
constraint. Note that you won’t always insert a constraint of a particular type for
every zoom position. EFL normally must be controlled in all positions, but
distortion may only need to be controlled in one or two positions, as shown below
(distortion for field 3, zoom 3 is about to be entered).

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Multi-Spectral Systems
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Zooming the wavelength weights in AUTO provides a way to design multi-spectral
systems such as spectrometers, in which the reference wavelength (REF) and
wavelength weights (WTW) have been zoomed. As an example, take a look at the
sample lens cv_lens:spectrom.len (not shown; the Zoom Data review window is
most useful). These are set up in the LDM, although AUTO has WTW weights
available which will override the LDM weights for optimization if specified.
The idea here is that these systems want to put each wavelength at a different
location (due to a prism, grating, or other diffractive surface). By zooming the
reference wavelength, the chief ray for each color is independent of the others.
Zooming the non-reference-wavelength weights to zero eliminates tracing those
colors in their respective zoom positions. This allows AUTO to optimize the red,
green, and blue spots separately but simultaneously.
In this type of setup, the wavelength weight for a particular wavelength (W2, say)
will be non-zero in only one zoom position. That position will be the one in which
W2 is the reference wavelength (Z1 in the spectrom.len example). This method also
works for systems with multiple wavelength bands (e.g., visual and IR channels),
although this naturally requires more wavelengths and zoom positions, and
probably other zoomed parameters as well, since the IR and visual channels may
use different optical paths.

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