Photonium Insight + custom automation

Run more design iterations

Insight enables optical engineers to go from spec to toleranced design without hand-assembling merit functions or writing the automation scripts themselves. It writes and runs the scripts, executes the analyses and optimization, and proposes design changes that are applied once approved. It drives Zemax, CODE V, or in-house tools and the macros and merit function templates your team already uses rather than replacing them.

Photonium Insight

What Insight automates

Chat-driven design environment

A complete optical design environment you run by chatting with a frontier LLM.

1:1 Zemax file compatibility

Native .ZMX import and export, so files move in and out of your existing Zemax workflow unchanged.

Prescriptions from patents

Upload a patent and get a working prescription back automatically, with units converted.

Analysis on request

Request any analysis in plain language and Insight runs and presents the result: ray trace, spot & RMS WFE, MTF, PSF, Seidel coefficients, RMS vs. Field.

Aberration diagnosis

Insight identifies the limiting aberration and what’s driving it, the diagnosis an engineer normally works out from ray fans, OPD, MTF, and Seidel terms.

Read the research

Optimization & tolerancing

Describe what to optimize or tolerance and Insight builds the merit function and runs it, in Zemax, CODE V, or our own optimization engine.

Progress

Feb 2026

Photonium Insight launch

Chat-driven optical design environment with native Zemax import and export

Mar 2026

Product

Hydrangea design generation neural network

Our reimplementation of Côté et al. (2021): a neural network that proposes lens starting points from an f/# and HFOV spec

Opt. Express 29, 3841 (2021)

May 2026

Design

Bentley (2005) design task

Three-element, 0.55 NA microscope objective

Proc. SPIE 5875

Design

Geary’s textbook evals

Every design task from Introduction to Lens Design with Practical ZEMAX Examples solved to spec

Product

Optical mental model

Structured aberration theory behind Insight’s design diagnoses

Read the research

Product

Bring your own Zemax

Full Zemax support on your own OpticStudio license

Jun 2026

Design

Dilworth (2013), 11 elements

0.35 NA microscope objective designed to the diffraction limit over two UV wavelengths

Proc. SPIE 8841

Product

Tolerancing

Monte Carlo yield, sensitivity analysis, and inverse tolerancing

Product

Patent database

Searchable corpus of 13k+ lens prescriptions extracted from patents

Read the release

Jul 2026

Design

Aspheric camera lens design

A 80° FOV, f/2.0, 4.55 mm EFL camera lens designed to the diffraction limit, significantly better than the result achieved in the paper

Nat. Commun. 15, 6572

Product

ISO 10110 fabrication drawings

Per-element prints and assembly drawings generated from the design

Product

Stock lens catalog

Search Edmund, Thorlabs, and other vendor catalogs and drop parts straight into a design

Aug 2026

Design

Dilworth (2013), 9 elements

The same UV relay solved with two fewer elements

Proc. SPIE 8841

Design

1990 IODC lens design problem

A 30° FOV, f/3, 100 mm EFL lens from 4 BK7 elements, beating out the first-place solution

Proc. SPIE 1354

Product

Ease of use

Drag-and-drop elements, click-to-edit sliders with live preview, and side-by-side analysis windows

How we deploy

Map

We sit with your optical engineers and trace one workflow end-to-end: RFQ feasibility, design setup, optimization, tolerancing, or factory handoff.

Integrate

We connect to the files, scripts, templates, and review documents your team already uses, and keep them as they are.

Automate

We build the automation for that workflow, shaped to your standards.

Prove

A short pilot on one live problem, under NDA, in your environment. You measure the engineering time it saves before going further.

Scope one workflow.

Start with a single workflow, scoped with your team and run under NDA.