Visualization

As mentioned in other sections of this documentation, the Makie backend can be used in order to generate 2D/3D renderings of optical systems and results generated with this package. Refer to the extensive Makie documentation and the Examples and the Tutorials sections of this package for a variety of showcases on how to visualize your simulation.

Rendering elements

The main function provided for visualization purposes is the render! function.

BeamletOptics.render! — Method

render!(axis, thing; kwargs...)

The render! function allows for the visualization of optical system and beams under the condition that a suitable backend is loaded. This means that either one of the following packages must be loaded in combination with BeamletOptics via using:

GLMakie
- preferred for 3D viewing
- use LScene or Axis3 environments
CairoMakie
- preferred for the generation of high-quality .pngs
- only Axis3 is supported

If no suitable backend is loaded, a MissingBackendError will be thrown.

Implementations reqs.

All concrete implementations of render! must adhere to the following minimal interface:

render!(axis, thing; kwargs...)

axis: an axis type of the union of LScene or Axis3
thing: an abstract or concrete object or beam type
kwargs: custom or Makie keyword arguments that are passed to the underlying backend

Refer to the BeamletOptics extension docs for Makie for more information.

source

If a suitable backend is loaded, additional dispatched render! functions will become available. For instance, this allows the plotting of a GaussianBeamlet.

Loading the extension

Refer to the following snippet for an example on how the extension loading behaves. When only BMO is loaded, the render! function becomes available but will throw an BeamletOptics.MissingBackendError when trying to plot something.

julia> using BeamletOptics

julia> methods(render!)
# 1 method for generic function "render!" from BeamletOptics:
 [1] render!(::Any, ::Union{BeamletOptics.AbstractSystem, BeamletOptics.AbstractBeam, BeamletOptics.AbstractObject, BeamletOptics.AbstractObjectGroup, BeamletOptics.AbstractRay, BeamletOptics.AbstractShape}, kwargs...)
     @ C:\Users\anon\.julia\dev\BeamletOptics\src\Render.jl:56

julia> axis = nothing;

julia> mirror = RoundPlanoMirror(25e-3, 5e-3);

julia> render!(axis, mirror)
ERROR: It appears no suitable Makie backend is loaded in this session.
Stacktrace:
 [1] render!(::Nothing, ::RoundPlanoMirror{Float64})
   @ BeamletOptics c:\Users\anon\.julia\dev\BeamletOptics\src\Render.jl:46
 [2] top-level scope
   @ REPL[5]:1

Once a backend has been loaded, additional dispatched versions of render! become available.

julia> using GLMakie

julia> methods(render!)
# 21 methods for generic function "render!" from BeamletOptics:
  [1] render!(ax::Union{Axis3, LScene}, s::BeamletOptics.UnionSDF; kwargs...)
     @ BeamletOpticsMakieExt C:\Users\anon\.julia\dev\BeamletOptics\ext\RenderSDF.jl:32
  [2] render!(axis::Union{Axis3, LScene}, css::BeamletOptics.ConcaveSphericalSurfaceSDF; color, kwargs...)
     @ BeamletOpticsMakieExt C:\Users\anon\.julia\dev\BeamletOptics\ext\RenderLenses.jl:1
  [3] render!(axis::Union{Axis3, LScene}, css::BeamletOptics.ConvexSphericalSurfaceSDF; color, kwargs...)
     @ BeamletOpticsMakieExt C:\Users\anon\.julia\dev\BeamletOptics\ext\RenderLenses.jl:31
  [4] render!(axis::Union{Axis3, LScene}, acyl::BeamletOptics.AbstractAcylindricalSurfaceSDF; color, kwargs...)
     @ BeamletOpticsMakieExt C:\Users\anon\.julia\dev\BeamletOptics\ext\RenderCylinderLenses.jl:1
  [5] etc...