“Traditional (design) methods have long relied on having a good starting point, a design not too far from the desired goals, and then working to improve it. If the starting point was indeed a good one and your skills were sharp enough, you could in that way arrive at a great design. However, one rarely has such a starting point, and only a few of us have the required skills. Thus the job is hard for most, and difficult even for the experts, most of the time. The core problem here is the fact that, except in a few simple cases, there is no closed-form solution to the lens design problem. That means there is no formula you can simply plug numbers into and obtain a great design. You have to think, try things, learn from experience, and iterate. My goal in writing the (SYNOPSYS™) program has been to put as much of the burden on the computer as possible, freeing you from the most tedious of traditional tasks.”
– Donald Dilworth, Creator of SYNOPSYS™
Lens Design, Automatic and quasi-autonomous computational methods and techniques
SYNOPSYS™ Optimization Algorithm
SYNOPSYS™ runs on the powerful PSD (Pseudo Secondary Derivative) algorithm. By considering the effects of the higher-order derivatives, the PSD method converges faster to deeper minima. Starting with this all flat system, in less than one second, SYNOPSYS™ optimization turns it into a 7 element imaging system with average RMS of 6µm over the three fields. The fastest optimization algorithm in the industry and is only available in SYNOPSYS™.
SYNOPSYS™ Automatic Design Tools
State of the art, innovate, and powerful
- Find realistic starting points for optical designs quickly
- Explore the design space and discover new design forms, sometimes with better performance, not normally realized using conventional design protocols
DSEARCH™ Automatic Design Search for fixed focus systems, with simple user inputs to reach realistic design starting points quickly.
Similarly, ZSEARCH™ is implemented for kick-starting complex zoom lens designs.
“Zemax has been working on this lens (a 270 deg fisheye) for days and the best I can do is about 10 waves PV.
In half an hour with SYNOPSYS™ I’m down to 1 wave. I can only imagine how fast things will go when I really get to know the program!”
—Steve Eckhardt, President of Eckhardt Optics, LLC
“Don Dilworth is one of the very best optical designers that I have met in my 50 year career. That is partly due to the incredibly powerful design program that Don has written, over many decades. Its artificial intelligence features are a wonder to learn about and it makes the designer’s job very much easier and more efficient. Tasks that may take days to do on competing programs can be done much faster with Don’s program. The most powerful feature of all is Don’s optimization routine, which can run circles around all of its competitors. This is partly due to his use of pseudo-second derivatives in his optimization program, which results in very fast convergence, no stagnation, and deeper minima than with competing programs. Don’s great skill as a designer coupled with his amazing program is an unbeatable combination. But his program by itself can be a major empowering tool for any designer.”
—David Shafer, Fairfield, CT
“I am relatively new to the field of lens/optical design and so far I have used both SYNOPSYS™ and Zemax. My first impression is that SYNOPSYS™ is far superior when it come to lens optimization, and more versatile in editing lenses. I am very impressed by the fact that when editing a lens in SYNOPSYS™, one can use either the radius or the curvature of the surface. As for the optimization, it is faster, robust and easier with SYNOPSYS™.”
–Jean Michel Taguenang, PhD – Huntsville, AL
“I have told you before, but let me reiterate again, that this optical software is by some odds the best I have heard of.”
–T.R. Whitney, CA
“The young people are trying to create ZEMAX models of my SYNOPSYS™ systems. With global coordinates in SYNOPSYS™ and only “coordinate breaks” in ZEMAX, they are getting a new appreciation for their chosen tool. The system has no plane of symmetry and includes a K-mirror to de-rotate the image seen through the high power laser pointer/tracker. SYNOPSYS™ handles the problem very nicely, of course.”
–William Swantner, NM
“Let me commend you on an excellent program. Before finding SYNOPSYS™, I had a look at KDE (hard-to-learn interface, not windows oriented, …), Zemax (not nearly as easy to use as SYNOPSYS™, and more $$ for the same features), Beam 3/4 (nowhere near enough features) and Optics Lab (again, not enough features).”
— R. Lee Hawkins, NC
“I have used six different optical design programs; yours has won the competition. I am studying the published work of David Shafer. The graphics front end of SYNOPSYS lends itself very well to his approach… The net effect is lower cost.”
— Roger Whitmer, Pittsfield, MA
“I am so glad to have SYNOPSYS™ because it permits me to underbid the competition on fixed priced jobs while simultaneously permitting me to make about twice my regular hourly rate.”
—W.S., Albuquerque, NM
“While I am used to OSLO and other programs, yours has by far and away the best tolerancing. I hate having to create a sensitivity table etc. I love being able to just put in a drop of Strehl of 0.25 and go. I built a 5-element lens using your tolerancing and it seemed to be right on the money. On my Athlon, tolerancing takes less than a minute to do everything ….”
— John A Gibson, USA
“I find your program to be best program for optimization available on the market…”
— Andrè Reitmann, USA
“SYNOPSYS™ optimization method works the best of any program that I have used, and the graphics are outstanding.”
— M. Hatch, Lexington, MA
“We are most impressed with the performance of the SYNOPSYS™ optical design and analysis program and with the services of Mr. Dilworth. The program contains features which give it great power and flexibility, such as the ‘Artificial Intelligence’ mode of operation. The work we have done in the few months that we have had the SYNOPSYS™ program could never have been done as easily with CODE-V. Mr. Dilworth provided instant advice as problems arose.”
— J. Bolton, Greenbelt, MD