I like visualizing things. Tools like geometers sketchpad were useful when I was learning trigonometry, even though the equations weren't very hard. The basic

I like visualizing things. Tools like geometers sketchpad were useful when I was learning trigonometry, even though the equations weren't very hard. The basic optical equations aren't very hard, but equations aren't sufficient for developing an intuition (for me!). Sticking a bunch of lenses on an optical breadboard and shining light through them was very enlightening. Playing around in SketchUp won't make you into a mechanical engineer. If there were an equivalent for optics it wouldn't make you into an optical engineer. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be very useful for it's tiny market.