Engineering and styling are what managers wanted in their redesigned stereo microscopes at Olympus America Inc., Melville, ,N.Y. (www.olympusamerica.com). They also wanted the equipment to be compact but still accommodate the complex optical path needed for the best performance. The result was the SZX7/SZ61 stereo microscope. It has 15% fewer parts and weighs 8% less than the previous model. Using OneSpace Designer Modeling from CoCreate, engineers were able to include two independent and parallel zoom paths, that is, two paths for both left and right eyes. Magnification ranges from 0.67 to 4.5x, and the zoom ratio is 6.7:1