Once my optics bench is finished, I plan on measuring all the lenses I have on hand and building something with them. To do that, I’ll have to try out designs using software. But since the design space is limited by what I actually have on hand, I have the opportunity to write a tool that uses the constraint of what I have “in stock” to reach a design goal.
The way I envision this now is some type of Genetic Boxcar2D but for optics. And the first step to that is a web technology ray tracer and optical system design tool. After all, the genetic algorithm is more or less tweaking all the knobs I’d be tweaking manually in such a tool.
Here’s a spread from my note book where I am thinking about the best way to model the domain problem of an optical system.
![](https://ed.angryzero.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/img_1387-1024x768.jpg)
And here’s me thinking about it some time between PAX (West) 2017 and my trip to Italy in the fall.
![](https://ed.angryzero.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/img_1388-768x1024.jpg)
Here’s a page from 2015 – at least before an HCDE info session on Oct 15th.
![](https://ed.angryzero.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/img_1389-768x1024.jpg)
I know I’ve been thinking about this for at least a decade, but I haven’t found my original notes, so we’ll leave it at that.
Not to self: I need to make an index to all my notebooks.