
Light pipe surface
The Light pipe surface describes a reflecting pipe of polygonal or circular cross section,
with an optional flattening parameter to allow rectangular or elliptical cross sections.
The length of the light pipe is given by the surface thickness
.
The material of the light pipe is the glass assigned to the surface on the
surface data editor.
A tapered light pipe can be obtained by specifying different radius at the
input end and at the output end.
Parameters
- nside
- Number of sides (circular pipe if less than 3)
- rin
- Inscribed radius of the input end.
- rout
- Inscribed radius of the output end
- theta0
- Angle in degrees between the x-axis and the normal to the first side. This parameter lets you rotate the light pipe about the optical axis without having to use coordinate breaks.
- NA
- Cutoff numerical aperture (N.A.) for the light pipe. Rays hitting the walls of the pipe at higher angles will not be terminated. Default value of 0 means this test is not done.
- flattening
- If not zero, flattens the light pipe, allowing rectangular light pipe. Defined by flattening = (rx - ry)/rx where rx is the size in the x-direction, specified by rin and rout. flattening must be between -100 and +0.99.
The Light pipe surface will not yield correct Seidel aberration coefficients.