| MACROS AND EXTENSIONS |
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| No matter how many features a program has, there often is a need for a custom analysis or computation. ZEMAX supports an extensive macro language called ZPL. ZPL is structured like BASIC, uses commands like PRINT and GOTO, and also adds new keywords such as RAYTRACE and GETMTF that can be used to extract data computed by ZEMAX. |
ZPL supports function calls, user defined arrays, numeric and string variables, text and graphical output, and a simple interface to the ray tracing algorithms. |
For more complex analysis jobs, ZEMAX supports a very general programming interface called extensions. |
ZEMAX is designed to operate in a client-server architecture. ZEMAX can be used to trace rays, do analysis, and optimize, all under the control of an external program. |
One application for this technology is to provide a user defined feature capability. These features are tightly integrated with the ZEMAX user interface. The extended features appear as menu items, and output is displayed as a standard ZEMAX feature. Extensions are written in C or C++ and provide a compiled program extension capability. |
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