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CAD or Computer-aided design has brought a revolution in the Textile Industry. The time consuming and cumbersome process of textile designing has been made easier by CAD. Now thoughtful and innovative designs are available to the textile designers and textile manufacturers at the click of a mouse. Let’s see what all benefits are provided by this technical tool.

When the products in pre-manufacturing stage are designed with the help of computer-based tools, it is termed as CAD or Computer-aided design. Sometimes the acronyms such as CADD or CAID are also used which stand for "Computer-aided design and drafting" and “Computer-aided Industrial Design” respectively. These terms are mostly used in the sectors related to the manufacturing of engineering goods. As far as textile industry is related, CAD is generally used for interpreting computerized designing. It includes both, software and sometimes special-purpose hardware.

The textile designs are the original works of the designers. CAD helps them to visualize and see their imaginative design in final form without producing any sample swatch. Sometimes, the customers also provide ideas for designing according to their particular requirement. These are in the form of painted artwork or fabric samples and sometimes film negatives. The textile designers, with the help of CAD, convert them into workable designs. For this to be done, the sample is scanned with the help of either scanners or digital cameras and then they are edited to obtain the final design.

The usefulness of CAD has driven the market to produce specific software for different aspects of textile and apparel manufacturing. If there are software for designing footwear, caps and bags, there are also pattern making software for fashion industry. There are solutions for sewn goods industry as well as systems for the design of jacquard woven fabrics. The garment pattern designs are even available in home, expert, and professional versions.

This easy to operate designing system – CAD – has many advantages.

o The expense and time is reduced in a considerable manner when compared to the laborious manual work of designing.

o Designing can be done from anywhere as the customers are able to control the process from remote locations as well.

o The data can be easily stored, transmitted, and transported through computer files.

o Digital swatches can be saved on floppy disks, zip disks, CD-ROM or hard drive thus saving space. Moreover they can be easily organized for fast and easy retrieval.

o The designs can be easily customized and personalized as corrections and editing can be done at any time without significant delays or cost increases.

o The designers don't need to produce swatches all the time as they can now see how a particular fabric or garment looks in different colors and shapes on computer screen itself.