How to use the finder app

The Glass Finder App combines glass catalogs from Schott, Ohara, Nikon, Hoya, Sumita, Apollo, and CDGM collected into a single SQL database. The application requires that WebGPU is enabled in the browser (default setting on Windows)

It allows the user to restrict the selection of some properties beyond what can be done by zooming or selecting directly in the diagram. When selecting one of the above checkboxes, a dual slider will appear with the full range of the selected property found in the database. It is quite possible that some items will disappear from the diagram during this operation. This happens when a glass does not have a value for the selected property. Most commonly this happens when selecting Cost as the glass catalogs contain many items without a specified cost.

The selection of wavelengths behaves differently compared to all the other. It too will display the minimum and maximum wavelengths found in the database, but there is no glass that covers this entire range. Therefore, selecting this box will show no glasses in the app. By restricting the range to, say, the visible range of 400nm to 700nm, a lot of database entries will again be found in the diagram.

Zooming and selecting glasses

The app responds to mouse drag, and scroll wheel actions. If you want to select a part of the Abbe diagram, place the mouse pointer above or below the region you are interested in and draw it across to form an rectangle that covers a region of choice.

Zooming in and out in the diagram can also be accomplished by using the scroll wheel on the mouse.

A mouse click into the digram with fetch additional information from the database, such as the transmission data, vendor name, transmission range, cost and status of the glass.