SAOTrace is a suite of software designed to simulate the as-built performance of grazing-angle X-ray optics using the ray-tracing approach. It is derived from portions of the NASA OSAC (Optical Surface Analysis Code) software suite. It can model nested conical as well as flat optical designs, and includes the capability of modeling arbitrary support structures and baffles. It can model non-ideal multi-layer reflective coatings as well as scattering from the optical surfaces.
It was designed primarily as an engineering tool for the Chandra (formerly AXAF) X-ray telescope, and has been in use by a small group of in-house engineers and scientists since the early 1990's.
Note: SAOTrace does not have a "commercial" polish to it. Documentation is uneven, and there is no system level documentation which provides an overview of the package and its capabilities. Nonetheless, it is a capable and flexible system for performing trade and sensitivity studies of non-ideal optical systems, as well as simulating the final performance of the as-built telescope, as it does for the Chandra mission.
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