Automated lens design for optical systems consisting of stock lenses.

The design of lens systems requires advanced knowledge and the mastery of highly specialized software tools. Furthermore, for the realization of the designed lens systems often custom-made lenses are needed, which are expensive and have lead times of several weeks compared to stock lenses with several days. To shorten realization time, a new approach for the automated design of lens systems consisting of stock lenses is developed. In this work, a multi-step process is described which identifies the most robust stock lens combination fulfilling prior defined requirements. The approach is realized with a computer program that can be used by a non-expert to find the most suited selection of stock lenses for a three-lens system for a set of requirements.