Happenings

Muscle Memory in CAD

I’ve been using Pointcarre since I began my design career, as this is the premier textile design program which Maharam chose to use when I worked there as a new designer.  Recently, and while on vacation, I’ve been going through all of my existing Signature patterns to refine their repeats and make them more readily accessible to our CAD drafters and internal team.  

This pattern, Linked In, is a great example of the complexity involved in nailing down the perfect repeat.  This particular design requires me to slide it around and document the exact ratio of overlap horizontally and vertically so that I can reprogram my coordinates every time I open this up. It’s a hassle. I have always avoided doing anything with this pattern for that reason.

Recently I took a refresher training class with Pointcarre, which helped me to make years of work disappear with one button.  All I had to do is resize to suppress overlap!

 It’s tough to take time away from the daily grind of running a company to learn new software, and expand my skills in this way because it’s not urgent, just deep on my to do list. Once I’m doing it, actually working deeply within a design on CAD, I am in a different mindset, completely relaxed, having fun and doing exactly what I’m meant to be doing. Creating and designing using my trained skill in repeating pattern, which the computer program simply enhances.

Thank you Pointcarre. Sheetal and Dan, I appreciate you! Your endless patience and knowledge has helped retrain my muscle memory in CAD.