Sometimes even the best CAD designs can use a little help
By John Shanahan
Making jewelry is the perfect confluence of art and science. It’s where aesthetic and inspiration meet application and practicality. Computer-aided design (CAD) software is one of the tools that helps brings these two sides of the equation together. But although CAD’s precision and ease of use can expedite the design process and allow jewelers to create gorgeous, complex pieces that would take countless hours to realize by hand, it’s not a flawless system. In fact, one downside of CAD is that using it can result in design problems that prevent a piece from effectively coming off the screen and into the real world.