FRED Version 25.50 Released

FRED version 25.50 is officially released and available for download on our website. Catch the highlights here:

The following new features and capabilities are available in this version.

New Features Summary

PREVIEW FEATURE - New CAD Import

 Newer CAD libraries have been added to FRED to facilitate CAD import.

 Notable usability enhancements include:

• Support for importing native CAD file formats such as SolidWorks, …

• CAD surfaces are imported as FRED native surfaces wherever possible. Using native surfaces results in faster ray tracing, and also provides a local reference on the native surface to reference other objects to. Any surfaces that cannot be represented by a native surface will continue to be imported as a NURBS surface.

• Supports the import of complex CAD geometry that may fail in the legacy importer.

Note that it is possible to revert to the legacy CAD import at any time by selecting the “Use Legacy CAD Import” option in Tools... Preferences... Miscellaneous. Also note that you do not need to restart FRED for this change to take effect. CAD Export is currently unaffected by this change and will be addressed at a later date.

 About Preview Features

Preview features are an early look at new functionality being added to FRED and are shared ahead of completion for the following reasons:

• To solicit feedback from users on a feature whilst it is being developed

• To help test a larger change over a longer amount of time in a wider array of use cases

Preview features are, by definition, unfinished. We know we still have work to do but we release them in preview form because we believe that they are useful even in their unfinished state.

Please share your feedback on these features via fredsupport@photonengr.com.

 General Updates

• Sub-assemblies have been updated to make it easier to manage models with more complex source set-ups containing multiple objects. Sub-assemblies:

  • are now permitted inside the Optical Sources Folder

  • may contain geometry and/or optical sources.

  This change makes it easier to group sources together into folders which can be toggled on/off as a group. It also allows sources to exist outside the sources folder (e.g. within a sub-assembly in the geometry folder), and allows geometry to exist within a sub-assembly within the source folder (e.g. a CAD model of the source defined alongside the source model in the sub-assembly).

• Volume scatter has been updated in the following ways:

  • Volume Scatter is now supported in FREDmpc

  • A calculation has been added to find the Mean Free Path from the total particle volume density, and average particle scatter cross section

  • Added support for direct user entry of a volume scatter ray/particle transmission factor. 

• Specifically for Mie scatter:

  • the simple particle binning into the Mie intensity function has been replaced with a quadratic fit through 3 nearest points when interpolating the Mie scatter function. This eliminates the unphysical "steps" observed in the Mie BSDF function at small scatter angles.

  • Updated the Mie volume scatter model with a simple power absorption algorithm that is applied to the ray during Mie scatter events, where the absorption is the result of a non-zero imaginary value of the particle refractive indices.

• Added support for Biaxial Birefringent media

• Added the ability to display material Birefringent/GRIN orientation axes in the 3D View for Sources, Elements, and Surfaces.

• Added ability to copy tree elements via a new script command, “CopyEntity”.

• Updated support for the Zernike surface.  It has been supplemented with an x,y offset for the Zernike polynomial, and Zernike conic base surface offset and tilt.  These are similar to the equivalent support of Zernike surfaces by CodeV and Zemax. 

• Added a new Cubic Hermite polynomial 3D curve type.

• Implemented a new greatly improved algorithm for predicting the polarization behavior of the Jones Matrix coating type away from normal incidence.  In addition, support for reflection has been implemented for the local "Y" polarization component of the linear polarizer Jones Matrix type.

• Two new menu items in the "Tools" main menu now allow the user to manually save and read FRED preference settings to or from a file or the registry. 

Miscellaneous Updates and Bug Fixes

In addition to the improvements described above, this release contains several smaller features and bug fixes. Please refer to the Release Notes found on the Help menu inside of FRED for a complete listing of all enhancements and defect resolutions.