Chevron Left
Back to First Order Optical System Design

Learner Reviews & Feedback for First Order Optical System Design by University of Colorado Boulder

4.3
stars
305 ratings

About the Course

This course can also be taken for academic credit as ECEA 5600, part of CU Boulder’s Master of Science in Electrical Engineering degree. Optical instruments are how we see the world, from corrective eyewear to medical endoscopes to cell phone cameras to orbiting telescopes. When you finish this course, you will be able to design, to first order, such optical systems with simple mathematical and graphical techniques. This first order design will allow you to develop the foundation needed to begin all optical design as well as the intuition needed to quickly address the feasibility of complicated designs during brainstorming meetings. You will learn how to enter these designs into an industry-standard design tool, OpticStudio by Zemax, to analyze and improve performance with powerful automatic optimization methods....

Top reviews

JA

Aug 8, 2022

I enjoyed very much this course! It gives a detailed (yet understandable for a broader audience) introduction to several methodologies to understand optical systems, mostly lenses, and their design.

RG

Aug 25, 2019

Really nice course with very clear explanations of the principles of optical engineering and learn how to use ZEMAX Opticstudio to simulate your optical system

Filter by:

51 - 75 of 106 Reviews for First Order Optical System Design

By SHUBHAM S

Aug 14, 2020

Very helpful. Material is good. Professor explains the topics very nicely.

By Arda E

Oct 13, 2021

A useful course to learn the first order approach to the optical design

By Douglas O N

Sep 3, 2022

Excellent! Keep offering courses like this! Thank you very much!

By Ghulam M

May 9, 2021

Amazing course, a bit tricky though! Instructor is really good.

By T

Apr 6, 2021

Excellent course, thank you Amy and Robert.

By Mansoor S

Jul 6, 2020

It was great experience to learn zemax

By Patrick L

Aug 19, 2022

Very clear lectures and explanations

By Sourangsu B

Feb 5, 2023

This is a great introductory course!

By MEBIN T

May 25, 2022

this course is very interesting.

By Vinod R

Jun 13, 2019

Nice Coarse to get started with.

By Chao X

Oct 26, 2020

Matlab skills are learned.

By LHS N X C

Nov 12, 2021

Прекрасный курс по оптике

By Natalia A

Aug 13, 2021

I loved the course!

By Xiandong L

Jun 9, 2020

This course is good

By Michael F P

Jul 28, 2019

Excellent course

By Abhishek S

Oct 12, 2020

excellent

By JAGADEESH K P

Nov 22, 2021

good

By Kirsty G

Mar 4, 2021

As physics courses go, this one is good but not great. Which is to say, the prof does a good job explaining the concepts but has a tendency to dive into complex examples without giving basic examples first. As others have stated, this means you'll have to do a fair amount of searching the internet for other resources to supplement the provided course material. It is possible to pass the quizzes and progress even without understanding 100% of the material.

There are some really useful nuggets of information about first-order optical design, which are explained well and often (after you've got past the basics of the first couple of weeks of material). This course gets to be quite rewarding from week 3 onwards. I do recommend it despite its downsides.

By Kuznetsov A V

Sep 27, 2020

Generally good, but some things should be described more detailly. For example, sign convention should be explained better, especially for mirrors. And in some tests the questions appear that were not discussed in the lectures, such as microscope, and it's necessary just to use some formula without deep understanding in this case. But as a whole the course content is interesting and really seems to provide a set of powerful optical design tools.

By Andrea M

Apr 6, 2021

The course gives information on basic optics and ray tracing, as well as more involved formulae for systems of thick lenses. I appreciated the various approaches that are presented, analytical, experimental and numerical. More than anything, the introduction to optics studio is very helpful, and I will definitely follow the next courses to deepen my knowledge of optical design.

By Toufik S

May 9, 2023

Very good introduction to optical system design.

Pros: progressive learning, videos well put together, presentation concise and well prepared, access to the pdf presentation,

Cons: little support to install and use the software, no response from the teachers, teachers are not very responsive generally

By Vishnu H P

Apr 17, 2020

I got to learn about ray optics and all the basic mathematical tools needed for an optical system design. Also got a hands on experience with Zemax OpticStudio. The assignments and homework problems are really good. But the best part is the capstone project at the end.

By Marcos M

May 25, 2022

Great content, although some questions in the quizes could be formulated in a clearer manner to avoid confusion or ambiguitiy. Overall a good experience and opportunity. Thanks to the instructors for creating this course.

By Thiago C C

Jan 26, 2021

Great content but the provided learning resources are limited to the video lectures and exercises. There is no staff helping in the discussion forums. Question hang there without answers for months.

By Alec Y

Dec 2, 2021

The first week was a lot of derivation which was rough to get through, but the course became much more applicable in the following weeks and I learned a lot of useful concepts.