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What is FRED?

FRED is an optical engineering software that uses ray tracing to simulate the path that light takes through optical systems. FRED has been used for more than 20 years by leading science, research and engineering companies to solve their toughest optical simulation problems.

FRED was designed from the ground up to be a general purpose ray tracer, with a simple CAD-like user interface to make it easy to work with optomechanical models of any level of complexity, and includes the ability to propagate both coherent and incoherent light and assign realistic surface properties to every component of a system. 

FRED can be used for a diverse range of applications, such as:  

  • Stray Light Analysis

  • Laser systems

  • Illumination and non-imaging optics 

  • Imaging Systems

  • Multi-wavelength systems

  • Thermal Imaging 

FRED Key Features

  • Fast and accurate simulation of virtually any light source, including lasers, arc lamps, LED’s, ideal emitters, bulbs and user defined ray sets.

  • Advanced geometry, scatter, optimization, tolerancing, scripting and graphic tools.

  • Assign realistic optical properties based on surface definitions including materials, thin film coatings, scatter models, etc.

  • Fine grain control of the ray trace properties used during the trace.

  • Comprehensive post trace analysis features and reports

  • Real-time visualization/editing of complex optical/mechanical systems.

  • Highly extensible via user defined scripts

Which Edition is right for you?

FRED Classic

Our entry edition to FRED Optical Engineering Software, providing users with the core capability required to propagate both coherent and incoherent light through opto-mechanical systems, and assign realistic surface and material properties to every component of the system.

FRED Classic (AKA, just “FRED") is a powerful software solution that can handle a wide range of applications such as: stray light analysis, laser applications, illumination and non-imaging optics, multi-wavelength systems, and more!

FRED Optimum

FRED Optimum includes all the features of FRED Classic but provides the user with more capability suited to the analysis of more complex opto-mechanical systems. The multi-threaded raytrace can run on up to 127 cores, and in addition this version of the software is able to share the calculation across a distributed network of computers.

Additionally, FRED Optimum has a multi-variable optimizer with a variety of local and pseudo-global algorithms, parameter sensitivity analysis, a system configurations manager, and parameter pickups.

FREDmpc

Would your analysis benefit from tracing 1 billion or even 1 trillion rays?

FREDmpc is the newest, most powerful edition of FRED, includes all the functionality of FRED Optimum and also allows ray generation, ray tracing and analyses to be performed on GPUs for incredibly fast, radiometrically precise opto-mechanical ray tracing and analysis.

Calculation times are often over 100x faster than a multi-threaded CPU raytrace while still producing radiometrically correct results, and raypath reporting for stray light analysis. Furthermore, speed can be further enhanced by stacking GPUs, and/or via a distributed calculation, giving the user access to practically unlimited power.

A snippet of a FRED Script to automatically extend one arm of a phase shifting interferometer, calculate the Irradiance and determine the sag of a measurement sample

BASIC Scripting Language

All editions of FRED have a built-in BASIC scripting language that further extends the program’s functionality to those features which are not already provided. Basic elements such as geometry, coatings, materials, and scatter models all have user-defined script versions.

With 2000+ FRED specific scripting extensions to the BASIC language, custom routines and analysis can be written to automate processes and make calculations. Additionally, the client-server automation using COM allows direct interfacing of FRED with programs such as Microsoft Excel and Matlab.

The potent combination of FRED’s innovative graphical user interface and BASIC scripting language means that the capabilities of the software can be used for an extremely large variety of applications.

Who uses FRED?

Here is a selection of papers created by FRED users to provide you with a sample of optical engineering applications for which FRED is currently used.

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