The purpose of this application is to give an end-user the ability to display optical pathways within complex optic-mechanical assemblies, designed using Pro/ENGINEER. A ray-tracing algorithm is used to calculate the path and the result of the calculation is used for creating the geometry of rays inside Pro/ENGINEER.
Pro/ENGINEER add-on
The application has been written using Pro/TOOLKIT, an API of the Pro/ENGINEER system. Using Pro/TOOLKIT capabilities it was possible to incorporate the functionality directly into Pro/ENGINEER so that the user interacts with the application directly within Pro/ENGINEER.
User Interface
The intuitive user interface consists of a few dialog windows.
For every part material (refractive index) can be specified and to any surface material properties (reflectivity, transmissibility) can be assigned.
Some properties can be set to every light source:
- type (point, spot, directional, general)
- number of rays
- wavelength
- ray distribution (random, polar, spherical, Cartesian, ...)
