The Procedural Notes discuss the important points for designing, analyzing, and engineering a specific class of optical system. All Procedural Notes are available in pdf format. Viewer version 4.0 or later available from Adobe Systems at no cost. For example, the concept of mechanical design to a mechanical designer is radically different from optical design to an optical designer, particularly in the context of automated design and optimization.
All optical systems contain both imaging and non-imaging or illumination systems.
This Procedural Note describes how ASAP is one of the only complete optical engineering programs that supports the tools necessary to simulate both imaging and illumination systems. Extended sources are physically and mathematically different than the point sources commonly used in lens design. The differences are significant enough that optical design and analysis software must have the capability to simulate point sources as well as extended sources. A brief discussion on some of the important issues in modeling extended sources in general is included. Light pipes are optical elements that transfer light from a source to a lighting task.