FRED Optimum (FRED) is an advanced optical engineering software program capable of simulating the propagation of light through virtually any optical/mechanical system, and is available in both 64-Bit and 32-Bit versions.  Download the latest brochure here.  FRED has two methods of propagating light, through either standard raytracing or a Gaussian beam decomposition algorithm to propagate coherent optical fields. FRED has been under development for over 10 years and currently contains approximately 570,000 lines of C++ code. (This does not include code that is part of third-party graphics routines and the BASIC compiler). Download the FRED 9.70 technical specifications here.

• Make rapid virtual prototyping accessible to engineers with a broad range of experience levels
• Use a Dynamic System Tree to order Curves, Surfaces, Custom Elements and Subassemblies to create geometry and order objects into layers
• Offer a high level of visualization and user interaction with a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) Interface
• Position any object versus any other object using multiple coordinate systems (i.e., local, global, self, other object, versus parent or subassembly)
• Includes IGES, and STEP translators for geometry import and export and optical translators for optical design import
• Introduce new support tools for the fastest geometry, materials, coating creation (i.e., digitizer, etc) and modification (i.e., parametric modeling, etc) with multiple aperture capability
• Compiled Visual Basic scripting with extended FRED functionality to think outside the box
• NEW Optimization tool to provide users with a hybrid general optimization algorithm that is non-sequential, allows for multiple targets, has fractional weighting capability to link variables and utilizes several built-in merit functions for unusual tasks. 
• Give engineers a new tool to complement existing software using non-sequential multi-threading algorithms for faster raytracing. Find out more about our fastest and most powerful edition, FRED Optimum here
  
  
  
  Recommended System Requirements to run FRED
  Intel^® Quad-Core or AMD^® Athlon x 3 CPU with 2 Gigabyte of RAM, 80GB Harddisk and NVIDIA^® Graphics Card with 128Mb of memory
  
  Preferred Systems to run FRED Optimum
  HP xw8400, Intel^® Dual Quad Core Xeon Processors, E5355 2.66Ghz, 2x 4MB L2, 1333
  Windows^® XP Professional, SP2 with Media, 256MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 3500
  4GB DDR2 SDRAM Memory, 160GB SATA 10K RPM Hard Drive
  or
  Dell Workstation 690, Intel^® Dual Quad Core Xeon CPUs E5355 2.66Ghz, 2x 4MB L2, 1333
  Windows^® XP Professional, SP2 with Media, 256MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 3500
  4GB, DDR2 SDRAM Memory, 160GB SATA 10K RPM Hard Drive
   
  What our Customers say about FRED and FRED Optimum:
  "FRED has reduced the raytrace time by a factor of two with its ability to use all four of the available processor cores.  This decrease in raytracing time factors directly back to hours or days of gained schedule for our customer."

  Frank Grochocki - Ball Aerospace

  “FRED is the most powerful and comprehensive optical engineering software on the planet.”

  James A. Carter III - Planning Systems Inc.