Abstract

Fabrication methods and requirements for the production of precise optical and optomechanical support systems are necessarily quite variant. The entire optical or optomechanical system must therefore be proposed and subsequently designed as a complete compilation of performance and cost issues. Many optical development efforts have relied on breadboarding components to determine the system performance characteristics without regard to subsequent fabrication consequences. Modern integration of computer optical design programs, CAD, and thermal, mechanical, and material property programs using FEA now permits a very reasonable prediction of performance. By developing the entire system using integrated design approaches, the very dataset from the ray trace can be superimposed on the 3D CAD drawing model, and critical issues such as interference, vignetting, and component mounting can be resolved prior to material selection or fabrication efforts.