International Optical Drawing and Coating Standards

This paper describes the recently written international standards on how to draw and indicate features on optical element and system layout drawings, and how to specify optical thin film coatings. Both of these standards represent significant changes from US standard practice (or, in most cases, non-practice) for making lens element drawings and specifying coatings. The drawing layout per se is not particularly new or different, but the methods of indicating features and the number of feature parameters available is totally new. The same is true for specifying coatings but here the logic is more easily understood.