Optenso
Affordable Excellence in Optical Design Software

Optenso, a distinguished player in the optical design software industry, has built its reputation on delivering accessible and efficient solutions for optical engineers and designers. Founded to provide affordable, high-performance tools, the company’s flagship product, OpTaliX, stands as a testament to its commitment to quality and cost-effectiveness.

Designed by optical engineers for optical engineers, the software integrates design, analysis, and optimization into a comprehensive package while ensuring that users face minimal financial burden.

Optenso’s success stems from OpTaliX’s combination of functionality and affordability—qualities that naturally foster lasting customer loyalty. Unlike many other software solutions, OpTaliX does not require costly yearly fees. Instead, it is offered as a permanent license, providing customers with long-term value and peace of mind.

“The attractiveness of OpTaliX to our customers is based on several factors,” says Fritz Blechinger, CEO of Optenso. “Clients consistently highlight our software’s thermal modeling capabilities, its extensive glass selection options, the example library, and the unique integration of illumination and thin-film analysis.”

These features have contributed to Optenso’s broad appeal across industries. The software’s success is also the result of a cost-effective development model. Since its commercial release in 1996, OpTaliX has been continuously refined through real-world projects, ensuring that new features are rapidly developed and efficiently integrated. This iterative process, driven by customer needs, enables Optenso to maintain high quality while keeping costs low—a balance that has become a hallmark of the company’s approach.

Recognizing that different users have different needs, Optenso offers OpTaliX in three distinct editions Pro, Edu, and LT:

• The Pro edition is the full-featured version, designed for professional optical engineers and designers.

• The Edu edition, functionally identical to the Pro version, is available exclusively to educational institutions such as universities and high schools, fostering the development of future engineers.

• The LT edition is tailored for users who require only basic optical design capabilities, offering geometrical analysis without optimization or the thin-film package. This version is especially popular among optical shops and businesses needing a simplified tool for occasional design verification.

Optenso’s customer-driven approach extends beyond feature development to the overall roadmap for OpTaliX. The company maintains close communication with its user base through a dedicated support channel, allowing customers to report bugs or propose new features. These suggestions directly influence development, ensuring that OpTaliX evolves in line with the changing needs of the industry. New software versions are released approximately three times a year, underscoring Optenso’s commitment to continuous improvement.

One challenge Optenso faces, particularly in aerospace, defense, medical devices, and photonics R&D, is integrating OpTaliX with other design tools. While no established integration currently exists for tools specific to these industries, Optenso is addressing the gap by developing interfaces with widely used standards such as STEP and Python. This will enable OpTaliX to integrate seamlessly into larger, more complex workflows, supporting end-to-end design processes.

A recent success story illustrates the practical benefits of OpTaliX. A customer encountered challenges with the color correction of a CCD objective, initially attributing the issue to the software’s optimization features. Upon closer examination, Optenso’s team discovered the problem lay in the glass selection used in the design. The chosen glass allowed for achromatic correction but not the apochromatic correction required to achieve the necessary resolution. By leveraging OpTaliX’s robust glass selection tools, the customer quickly identified the appropriate glass combinations, leading to significant performance improvements and exceeding the required modulation transfer function (MTF) limits.

Through its focus on affordability, customer collaboration, and continuous innovation, Optenso remains at the forefront of the optical design software industry. Its commitment to serving both seasoned professionals and newcomers ensures that OpTaliX will continue to be an essential tool for optical design across diverse sectors.