LensVIEW™: A Comprehensive Optical Design Database

Every optical designer should have a copy of LensVIEW. Using LensVIEW to do the background research on existing optical designs can save countless hours of frustration and wasted effort.  Using LensVIEW to search for designs which are similar to the design you need, takes only a few minutes and gives you a great source of starting points.  Once you have found a candidate design, exporting the lens to your optical design program, where the design can be modified, is quick and easy.  LensVIEW will likely pay for itself the very first time you use it and will prove to be an invaluable resource for all your optical design projects

What is LensVIEW?

LensVIEW is a comprehensive CD-ROM database of lens designs found in the U.S. and Japanese patent literature and in the classic Zeiss Index of Photographic Lenses.  With data from the late 1800's through the latest optical designs, LensVIEW is without peer in its scope.  With more than 30,000 individual designs and many more added with each release, you will never be at a loss for a starting point for a tough design problem.

The LensVIEW Interface

Complete Search Capability

LensVIEW is fully searchable on 64 different optical and bibliographic parameters, which are listed below.  A special LensVIEW Classification System having 110 different categories is also included making the searching easier.

Searchable Parameters
Effective Focal Length (EFL)	Max. Field Angle	Stop Surface Number	Priority Data
Afocal EFL	Max. Real Img. Ht.	Surface Type	International Classification
Back Focal Length	Max. Object Ht.	Zoom Surface	Original U.S. Classification
Working Distance	Wavelength (Primary)	No. of Zoom Positions	Current U.S. Classification
Telephoto Ratio	Refractive Index (Primary)	Fraction of Patent Scale	Field of Search
Overall Physical Length	Abbe Number	Patent Number	U.S. Patents Cited
Entrance Pupil Diameter	Nf-Nc	Title	Foreigh Patents Cited
EPD Distance	No. of Glass Elements	Abstract	Other Publications Cited
Max. Parax Image Height	Overall Glass Length	Assignee	Primary Examiner
Lateral Magnification	No. of Optical Surfaces	Assignee Address	Assistant Examiner
Angular Magnification	No. of Physical Surfaces	Application Number	Attorney
Zoom Ratio	No. of Cemented Groups	Filing Date	Number of Claims
Numerical Aperture	No. of Groups	Issue Date	Number of Figures
Number of Examples	First Inventor's First Name	Any Inventor's First Name	User-Entered Keywords
Number of Inventors	First Inventor's Last Name	Any Inventor's Last Name	User-Entered Comments
Related Application Data	First Inventor's Address	Any Inventor's Address	LensVIEW Classification

LensVIEW Exports Lens Data to the Format You Need!

After you have narrowed your search to a few lens designs, you are ready to move to the next step. All the lens designs in LensVIEW are exportable to popular lens design file formats including ACCOS®, CodeV®, OSLO®, SIGMA® and ZEMAX®. At the click of a button you can generate a properly formatted lens file. You can then load up the file into your lens design software and begin modification of the lens for your specific requirements.

Intuitive Graphical Interface

The intuitive interface supports multiple graphic windows, including cross-sectional layouts, aberration plots, and numerous dialog boxes and text display windows. The aberration plots include longitudinal spherical aberration, offense against the sine condition, sagittal and tangential astigmatism and distortion. LensVIEW displays multiple text windows including optical prescription data, optical system data, LensVIEW classification data, bibliographic data, references cited, inventors, abstract text, sample claims and application data. There are also windows that display user-defined data so that notes may be added to each lens for future reference.

LensVIEW is Available in Two Editions

LensVIEW-USP	LensVIEW-INT
Contains over 16,000 designs from U.S. patents!  The database is fully searchable on a wide variety of optical, bibliographic and classification parameters.  All designs can be exported to the electronic file formats of popular lens design programs.	Contains all the designs in LensVIEW-USP plus almost 16,000 additional designs from Japanese patents and the classic Zeiss Index of Photographic Lenses for a total of more than 32,000 designs!

System Requirements

LensVIEW runs under Windows 2000/XP and requires 32 MB RAM and at least 30MB of disk space (500MB recommended). More hard disk space will allow LensVIEW data to be copied to the hard disk, resulting in faster LensVIEW searches.

For More Information

LensVIEW is produced by Optical Data Solutions, Inc. and distributed worldwide by Lambda Research Corporation. A fully functional demonstration version of LensVIEW with 167 different lens design examples is available for download here.

LensVIEW is a trademark of Optical Data Solutions, Inc.
OSLO is a registered trademark of Lambda Research Corporation
All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners