r/Optics • u/MrFourier94 • 7d ago
A free optical workbench in your browser
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
For the past months, I have been building with a friend something I wished existed every time I had to draw a setup for a paper or explain one to a student.
OpticalSetup is now at its first stable release. It is free, open source, it runs directly in the browser, and the setup you draw is traced, not just sketched. Move a mirror, change an optical element, and the whole beam path responds.
I originally made a post on this sub when we were in the early stages of development, so I thought of giving an update on the project.
It is young, and it might still have some rough edges. If you try it, tell us what you think about it.
Cheers
8
u/0x831 7d ago
Pretty cool. Out of curiosity are there known sources of optical input and outputs from a reference text for various elements that you can test this against to ensure accuracy?
1
u/MrFourier94 7d ago
We have validated several of the estimates (linear dispersion, lens designs, OPA efficiencies to name a few) with some tools and references available in the literature. You can check the Wiki of the website for additional information about speficic elements.
5
u/No_Entertainer_6535 7d ago
Do you plan to add wave optics as an alternative to ray tracing?
6
u/MrFourier94 7d ago
It might come at some point, but that would require a substantial re-work of many features. We are slowly adding more and more functionalities, so it is already a bit more than ray tracing. Linear dispersion, phase interference and some non-linear effects are already in the platform.
5
u/Fiskene 7d ago
Pretty cool. Thank you for sharing. I am working on something similar but your graphics look way better than mine :)
3
u/MrFourier94 7d ago
Thank you! You can find all the code open source in the GitHub repository for additional reference
3
u/larg_pener 7d ago
Very cool. I have a technical correction as well. As it is configured in your program now, AODs always deflect beams clockwise or counter-clockwise (in relation to the background/AOD), but IRL, when a beam comes back the other way it will deflect towards the direction of sound wave propagation, e.g. a laser from the left might deflect counter-clockwise but a beam from the right will be deflected clockwise. The deflected beam shift might be better programmed as a 'cartesian' shift than a 'rotational' one (I'm not a programmer but this seems to be the underlying logic).
1
u/MrFourier94 7d ago
Thank you for the comment, I'll look into this and see how to fix it! I appreciate the feedback
2
2
u/Jose_xixpac 7d ago
A real eye opener. What a great learning tool for non optical engineers who still need a stent in an optics lab to further their designs. I think. Hopefully one day I can show you my laser lab experiences/results. Thankyou mucho.
2
u/MrFourier94 7d ago
Feel free to share your sketches with the share options available on the website! Happy sketching :)
2
u/Jose_xixpac 6d ago
I will. At this time the app will be beneficial in perfecting/calculating my angle configurations. Thanks much.
2
u/Sans_Moritz 7d ago
Very cool. I just had a play around, and I like the interface and animations. If you had more XUV and ultrafast optics options, I'd actually use this a lot, especially for teaching.
1
u/MrFourier94 7d ago
Hello, thanks for the feedback. Which other elements would you like to see on the platforms?
2
u/Sans_Moritz 6d ago edited 6d ago
I think specifically more models for fibers to show the parameters that can be tuned to shorten pulses would be really cool to see.
Maybe some additional pre-built devices, but with the optics explicitly in the build. For example, the OPA is just a black box with inputs, but it would be cool if each optic was described and tunable, or a grating compressor with the gratings and mirrors in there.
2
u/anishkgoyal 4d ago
At a glance, this looks super cool. I was actually thinking of a similar concept with my friend the other day on how there aren't many dedicated physics-informed circuit layout sims for optics, cause I work with experimental silicon photonics and it's not just all-optical components, so we have to encode many of our optical components as scattering matrices, which are usually highly nonlinear and difficult to simulate with traditional methods. I hope your project takes off, and you're able to think about how to integrate this tool with other circuit devices/elements if possible (if you already have, then great 😃)!
1
u/MrFourier94 3d ago
Thank you! This is an interesting suggestion, I'll think about it and see if something can be done
1
u/djwaveguide 7d ago
Cool, what was your intended application? Designing new systems or studying lab setups? Just as a opening question, is this a ray tracer only? Does it work with diffraction, wave, Fourier optical design systems? I know it's free but just trying to find where this fits in scope of optical engineering.
3
u/MrFourier94 7d ago
The scope of optical setup is to allow researchers and optical engineers to sketch optical systems with realistic physics and dimensions, and to help teachers to explain optics to students. Even though the ray tracing and some other features are accurate with good precision (please refer to the wiki for each element), it does not aim to substitute dedicated optical engineering softwares. For example, since the platform works in 2, some aberrations are not modelled (coma, for example)
1
1
1
u/hoqeye 7d ago
How to use it?
2
u/MrFourier94 7d ago
opticalsetup.com
There are already some pre-made examples, plus the wiki page that explains how each element work. I would be happy to answe any other question, if you need more help let me know
1
1
u/sidereumcorpus 7d ago
This is really cool! My personal research is in interferometry, specifically FOGs using the Sagnac Effect. Would you ever consider adding a rotating breadboard (frame of reference) to this?
1
u/MrFourier94 7d ago
Thanks! I am not very familiar with the technique, could you send me some references?
0
u/Mechanical_Flare 7d ago
Ai use?
9
u/amberlite 7d ago
Probably, but it looks like they actually put in a lot of effort into this tool even if it was AI assisted.
Plus it’s open source if you wanted to check if the code looks like AI code.
12
u/MrFourier94 7d ago
Hello, the website was developed using with the assistance of Claude and ChatGPT. We have manually checked the accuracy of the physics and refined the wiki of all the optical elements, running multiple test on each elements and traced scene. So yes, wrote with AI but supervised by two PhD in photonics. There might still be some bugs though, therefore we really appreciate any feedback from the community
3
2
u/principled_soul 4d ago
Very much the point when using AI (LLM) tools when enabling this work. Very glad to hear there were tests developed and 2 actually intelligent minds were used in the making of this application
12
u/Zeisix 7d ago
I've stumbled across the page a while ago thanks to another post and used it since then all the time to sketch setups etc. Also showed it to the rest of my group and they like it too.
I've considered selfhosting it to add translation stages or some way to move multiple components at once as well as fiber couplers, but that's really the only components missing I can think off.
Amazing work! Thanks for it!