AperiOptic: the open workbench for optical engineers and enthusiasts

No sign-up. Always free.

AperiOptic is a free, browser-based optical-engineering workbench built for lens design, everyday optics calculations, and free ray tracing solutions. Sketch a full optical system — sources, lenses, mirrors, beamsplitters, filters, and detectors — and trace rays through it in real time, with nothing to install and no license to buy.

The non-sequential ray tracer drives a complete wavefront-error pipeline: optical path difference, Zernike decomposition, point-spread function (PSF), and modulation transfer function (MTF), plus a damped-least-squares and Powell optimizer, through-focus z-stacks, multi-wavelength and spectral-filter support, beamsplitter and cavity handling, and Gaussian-beam propagation. Bring existing designs in directly from Zemax ZMX files.

Alongside the main design tool, AperiOptic serves as a comprehensive hub for optics calculators. Access over 100 interactive tools for thin-lens and lensmaker equations, Gaussian-beam parameters, the diffraction limit, f-number and numerical aperture, fiber coupling, Fresnel reflection, and Zernike terms — each complete with copy-paste Python, MATLAB, and JavaScript snippets.

To keep you connected to the broader field, AperiOptic features a daily optics-and-photonics news feed. Stay up to date with the latest academic papers, research breakthroughs, and industry headlines, all integrated directly into your engineering workspace.

On this site

  • Optical design & analysis: Design lens systems in the browser: non-sequential ray tracing, spot diagrams, wavefront error, PSF, MTF, through-focus z-stacks and an optimizer. Imports Zemax .zmx files.
  • Optics calculators: 100+ free optics calculators: thin lens, Gaussian beams, diffraction limit, f-number and NA, fiber coupling, Fresnel reflection, Zernike terms and more, each with code snippets.
  • Optics & photonics news: New research, industry news and community discussion from across optics and photonics, gathered in one place and refreshed every day.
  • Manual: How to use AperiOptic's design tool: the surface table, sources, detectors and analysis, the optimizer, .zmx import, design files and the sample systems.
  • About: What AperiOptic is, how it was built with AI assistance, how to support it, and its no-warranty notice.
  • Validation: How AperiOptic's results are checked: closed-form solutions, the ray-optics and Optiland ray tracers and published Zemax OpticStudio results, every number from the test suites.

Latest release: v1.1.2 (2026-11-05), Mirrors on lens faces, and tilted surfaces drawn true

Two fixes to reflections in the design tool, both reported by a user.

  • A mirror placed exactly on a lens face (a silvered back, a Mangin mirror) now reflects. When it came after the lens face in the list, the light passed straight through it; now the order does not matter.
  • A surface tilted about more than one axis is now drawn at the angle it is traced. The 3D view combined the tilts in a different order, so such a mirror could look tilted while the rays reflected as if it were not. The traced results were right and are unchanged.