Fred Optical Engineering Software (FRED) is a commercial 3D CAD computer program for

optical engineering Optical engineering is the field of science and engineering encompassing the physical phenomena and technologies associated with the generation, transmission, manipulation, detection, and utilization of light. Optical engineers use optics to solve ...

used to simulate the propagation of light through optical systems. Fred can handle both incoherent and

coherent Coherence, coherency, or coherent may refer to the following: Physics * Coherence (physics), an ideal property of waves that enables stationary (i.e. temporally and spatially constant) interference * Coherence (units of measurement), a deri ...

light using

Gaussian beam In optics, a Gaussian beam is a beam of electromagnetic radiation with high monochromaticity whose amplitude envelope in the transverse plane is given by a Gaussian function; this also implies a Gaussian intensity (irradiance) profile. Thi ...

propagation. The program offers a high level of visualization using a

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

(What You See Is What You Get) parametric interface. According to the publisher, Photon Engineering, the name "Fred" is not an acronym, and does not mean anything. Fred allows for non-sequential raytracing with support to raytrace on up to 63 cores. Fred also features a downhill simplex optimizer where the user can specify variables, merit function and multiple targets for optimization. The program can import and export

IGES The Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES) is a vendor-neutral file format that allows the digital exchange of information among computer-aided design (CAD) systems. It's an ASCII-based textual format. The official title of IGES is ''D ...

STEP Step(s) or STEP may refer to: Common meanings * Stairs#Step, Steps, making a staircase * Walking * Dance move * Military step, or march ** Marching Arts Films and television * Steps (TV series), ''Steps'' (TV series), Hong Kong * Step (film), ' ...

, and OBJ CAD formats. Fred is also compatible with other hardware measured light source measurement software such as ProSource. Fred can also interact with

MATLAB MATLAB (an abbreviation of "MATrix LABoratory") is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementa ...

and Mathematica using an

OLE Automation In Microsoft Windows applications programming, OLE Automation (later renamed to simply Automation) is an inter-process communication mechanism created by Microsoft. It is based on a subset of Component Object Model (COM) that was intended for us ...

Client/Server interface. Fred was used in the design of the NOAO's

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, previously referred to as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), is an astronomical observatory currently under construction in Chile. Its main task will be carrying out a synoptic astronomical survey, the Le ...

. Fred is available in three editions.

References

External links

Photon Engineering Website
Optical software Computer-aided design software for Windows {{CAD-software-stub

See also

References

External links