Of the new technologies available in the jewelry industry, two of the most widespread developments having a tremendous impact on the way designers, manufacturers, and retailers do business are computer-aided design (CAD) software and laser welders. If you’ve been intrigued by these technologies but haven’t felt informed or brave enough to make a buying decision, this article is a must-read.

We’ve compiled comprehensive charts of data to enable you to quickly and easily compare some of the most popular options available to the jewelry industry. In addition, we’ve interviewed users of various CAD programs and laser welders to find out what impact those products have had on their businesses.

We encourage you to further explore these various technologies by visiting trade shows for demos, requesting lists of users you can contact, discussing any questions you have about performance or service with the product manufacturers, and taking advantage of opportunities to test them out.

Technology is certainly the wave of the future. Choose the right product for your company and ride it!

Users’ Perspectives: CAD Software
Compiled by Suzanne Wade

Which CAD program is the best? According to the users we interviewed, it depends on what you want to do, and how you want to do it. There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all program, as evidenced by the fact that many CAD users regularly employ more than one program. “I use Rhino and SolidWorks, and I use them both equally. They’re like apples and oranges,” says Sue Dorman, a Los Angeles jewelry artist who teaches CAD/CAM at Loyola Marymount University. Justin Johnson, head of the CAD department at Au Enterprises in Berkley, Michigan, agrees. “I’m very glad I’ve got both [ArtCAM and Rhino]. There’s al-ways something one can do much quicker than the other one can.”

Even users that “graduate” from one program to another often return to their first CAD software to accomplish certain tasks. “I don’t think we’ll ever completely replace JewelCAD with Matrix. There’s going to be a place for both,” says Sean Ryan, a JewelCAD user who recently added Matrix to his operation. “They both do things differently, and both have their strong suits.”

When choosing your first program, then, the question isn’t which one is the best, but which one is the best for you. To determine that, you’ll need to rank a couple of factors in order of importance to you, including the cost of the program, the availability and type of training, and the quality of the technical support.

Perhaps most importantly, you’ll also want to think about your particular design style. “If you’re a trained graphic designer who uses Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, paint programs, and drawing programs already, then that would, in general, lead you to [2-D modelers] like ArtCAM,” says Thomas Cavagnaro of CadSmithing, a CAD/CAM service bureau in Chandler, Arizona. “If you’re three-dimensional and you find it hard to think flat—if you’re used to working with a chunk of wax and carving a ring—[you’ll look for a 3-D modeler]. It’s just two very different ways of thinking.”

You simply cannot overestimate the importance of choosing software that matches the way your mind works, says jewelry designer Paul Klecka of Chicago, who recently purchased Matrix. “When software makes you conform to it, something is wrong,” he says. “[My CAD program] mirrors my thought process, how I mentally consider the piece of jewelry and how I build it in my head. That’s why I bought it.”

Whatever software you choose will have its strong suits and its weaknesses—and what those are will depend to a great degree on what your strengths and weaknesses are. Find a program that thinks the way you do, and you’ll likely view CAD as one of the greatest discoveries you’ve ever made—no matter what program you choose.

SolidWorks
SolidWorks was created for mechanical design by engineers, and it continues to be a popular program for product design in a wide variety of industries, including aerospace. As such, it’s a solid and powerful CAD program, but it doesn’t come with a short learning curve or special features geared to jewelers.

“SolidWorks is a difficult program to work,” admits Dorman, who teaches both Rhino and SolidWorks to students in the engineering and art programs at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “It requires a lot more steps to get to where you want to go, and you have to remember the order of the steps.”

Dorman finds that SolidWorks’ design approach isn’t intuitive for most jewelers. “You have to preconceive where the geometry is going to be, what the angle of the plane is, and how far from the apex the plane has to be to even create a shape, so there’s much more abstract thinking,” she says.

In addition, SolidWorks doesn’t allow easy modifications of earlier steps. If the artist decides later in the design that a particular component doesn’t work, she must retrace her steps and back up to the point where the component was drawn. “I usually just start over,” Dorman says. “It’s easier.”

Where SolidWorks excels is in ensuring that what you see is what you get. Because SolidWorks is a solid modeler, rather than a surface modeler, it will only permit the creation of shapes that can be physically constructed. “With Solid-Works, you’re always assured of having the right geometry,” says Dorman. “With [surface modelers, the design] can look like it’s all together on screen, but when you try to unite the components or change the design to an STL format, it won’t work.”

In a recent project that focused on creating unique settings for rough diamonds, Dorman found SolidWorks ideal for creating the settings. “I wanted to be able to show off as much of the crystal as possible, and yet have it in a secure setting, and I found SolidWorks enabled me to do that,” she explains, noting that SolidWorks’ solid geometry makes it easier to ensure that the mechanics she figures out in the virtual world will work in the real world.

SolidWorks can also produce blueprint-like mechanical drawings, which Dorman notes can be particularly helpful if you intend to hand the design over to someone else to build by hand as opposed to having it created on a milling machine or rapid prototyping system. “The drawing program will lay out each shape and calculate all the measurements for you, so you can hand that to a bench jeweler and he can fabricate the piece,” she says, adding that SolidWorks also comes with a nice rendering program.

Rhino
Another generic CAD program that has been adopted by many in the jewelry industry is Rhinoceros, or “Rhino” for short. This program offers a surface modeling approach that Dorman says many jewelers find intuitive. “Rhino has this wonderful command bar, which tells you what to do next,” says Dorman. “You also have an undo command and you can go back about 10 [steps], so if you’re building something and the proportions aren’t right, you can go back to that element.”

Because Rhino bases designs on the outer “skin” of the three-dimensional shape, designs are easily manipulated. “You can literally pick up a section of skin as if it were rubber or latex and pull it and shape it,” says Dorman. “It’s similar to shaping clay with your hands, that’s how malleable the shapes are, and that’s very exciting in terms of what you can create.”

Johnson finds that Rhino’s approach allows him to easily create shapes, such as pieces with undercuts, that are normally difficult to make with solid modeling software. And with a background in AutoCAD, he found Rhino’s command structure more familiar and easier to use. “I like that you can type in your commands rather than have to hunt for the icon, and I like the customization I can do in Rhino,” he says. “You can create your own icons and establish your own key commands, which allows you to more quickly and easily accomplish operations that you use frequently.”

The trade off is that occasionally a design that appears to work on screen won’t work at the next stage. “In Rhino, you can manipulate shapes freely, but sometimes you manipulate them right out of the geometry,” says Dorman. “It requires real hand-eye coordination to move the part so that it makes contact with the other parts.” As a result, designs created in Rhino can require the artist to readjust the components to get them past the screen stage.

As a generic CAD program, Rhino also lacks special tools for jewelers, or other features designed to make the learning curve shorter for those users. It can be an inexpensive way to begin, though, and offers the possibility of adding features later. “If people want to start cheap, I tell them to just get plain Rhino,” says Cavagnaro. “You don’t have any of the jewelry-related features, but you can buy plug-ins, and that’s a great, cheap way to get started.”

Matrix
Matrix, says Cavagnaro, is Rhino on jewelry steroids. Built on top of the Rhino CAD software, Matrix adds a wide variety of jeweler-friendly tools, plus jeweler-knowledgeable tech support.

“I think Matrix is certainly worth the money if you’re a busy person, because it saves a tremendous amount of time,” he says. “I can do [the same designs] in Rhino, but I can do a lot of things in Matrix many times faster because of the shortcuts they’ve built into it.”

One example, Cavagnaro says, is the speed with which he can create pavé settings. By choosing a set of stones and specifying the number of prongs and the space between the stones, Matrix automatically creates the settings, whether it’s one stone or 30. “You can do things like that in Rhino, but everything is from scratch,” says Cavagnaro. “In Matrix, there’s been a lot of thought about how jewelers make jewelry.”

For Klecka, the primary selling point for Matrix was that it worked the way he thought about jewelry design. When he was exploring CAD options, he was invited to visit the Gemvision headquarters in Davenport, Iowa, to test the program. “What I discovered was that Matrix creates a piece of jewelry in the same way I create the piece in my mind,” he says, noting that he visualizes the complete design in his mind before he begins, and then starts by drawing the opening for the finger size and placing gemstones—the same approach used by Matrix.

That isn’t necessarily true for everyone, though. “Matrix is a wonderful program, but difficult to learn,” says Sean Ryan, the design shop foreman at Schmitt Jewelers in Phoenix, Arizona. “It’s a totally different way of thinking about building jewelry.” A JewelCAD user as well, Ryan finds Matrix far less intuitive than his first program. “I won’t say it was ‘easy’ to [learn JewelCAD], because I had no CAD experience, but I think that we overcame those hurdles pretty quickly, faster than we seem to be able to with Matrix.”

Part of the reason newcomers sometimes find the program difficult to master is its array of tools, which offer artists many different ways of arriving at the same finished product. For example, says Klecka, he often prefers to start with a block and use Boolean cutters to shape it, as though he were carving a wax. Others might opt to use the blend tool to put different shapes together to get to the same finished piece. Other times it might make more sense to draw a piece with carefully rendered lines and then extrude it. “With so many choices about how to make something, you could give a rendering to three different users, and get three different ways to turn it into a CAD design,” says Klecka.

Matrix also offers sophisticated rendering capabilities, which can be a tremendous asset to a retail store. “The biggest thing that has attracted us to Matrix is its rendering capabilities,” notes Ryan. “Matrix does an unbelievable job of rendering a piece. You would swear the piece has already been made, and a photograph was taken of it.”

Klecka notes that he benefited greatly from two intensive days of training provided by Gemvision. Jeff High, Gem-vision’s president, “wouldn’t deliver it to me without training,” Klecka says. “He said, ‘I could send it to you, but you’d freak. I’m going to make you do [the training].’ And I’m so glad he did, because if I’d just loaded it up and started playing, I’d have been totally frustrated.”

Despite the relatively steep learning curve, many users find Matrix offers a good compromise between power and ease of use. Its flexible libraries and builders—including the ability to alter and save designs you use often—mitigates the need to build pieces in multiple steps. In addition, the sheer number of tools and customizable options available in Matrix allows the user to adapt the program to his or her needs.

“What [Gemvision has] done with Matrix is create a program that allows anyone to make that leap from mind to computer in a way that doesn’t force you into a certain method or process,” says Klecka. “There are so many tools and possibilities—no matter how you approach design, it’s going to have a tool or button or shortcut that’s going to serve you.”

ArtCam jewelsmith
ArtCAM JewelSmith is the member of the Delcam CAD software family designed specifically for jewelers. Although the newest versions offer increased three-dimensional modeling capabilities, the program’s maker continues to tout its capabilities to convert 2-D designs to 3-D models. Those roots as a 2-D modeler also continue to show in the way the program builds models, making it most suited to artists comfortable going from 2-D to 3-D.

“If you’re a very graphics-oriented person and you’re already using Adobe Illustrator to do 2-D drawing, then software like ArtCAM that’s a direct translation of 2-D into 3-D is ideal,” says Cavagnaro. “I just got some files from a customer that draws in two dimensions in Adobe Illustrator, and they’re ready to have things done in CAD. I can import that file right into ArtCAM [and give it dimension].”

There are times when the two-dimensional start can also work to the artist’s advantage. Cavagnaro has discovered that an easy way to create a shadow band is to fit a rolled piece of paper inside the existing ring, trace the edge of the ring, unroll the paper, and scan the line. By beginning the new design with that scanned line, he can easily create a ring with an edge that perfectly matches the line of the existing ring.

The program can be a bit more difficult to master for artists who are more comfortable working in three dimensions. “The hardest part for me was the visualization of it,” says Johnson. “You have to visualize what the piece would look like flat and unwrapped and build it that way, as opposed to [3-D modelers], where you build it the way you want it to be.”

The effort is worth it for Johnson, though, because of the program’s strengths in interfacing with milling machines. “I use ArtCAM for all my CAM-side work, such as for creating toolpaths,” he says, noting that since Au Enterprises has two milling machines in-house, he tries to mill models whenever possible. “I think it can rival anything out there, even most engineering software. It’s extremely powerful.”

Johnson also likes ArtCAM’s sculpting feature. “The sculpting feature allows you to model a design like you are working in clay,” he explains. “You start with a 3-D relief, and you have a set of tools that resemble paintbrushes. You can go in and depress, raise, and carve however you want it to look.”

ArtCAM comes with two days of training, which Johnson found was enough to familiarize him with the layout of the program and learn the basics. Practice afterwards was essential to consolidate those lessons, though. “They’ve tried to make it as user-friendly as possible,” he says. “The help function and their build assistants tell you what everything does and how to set up your tools. It’s pretty intuitive.”

Johnson has also found ArtCAM’s technical support helpful. “If you have a problem or question, you can just call and ask someone, and they help you out,” he notes. “It’s great having their focus toward the jewelry industry.”

JewelSpace
For an inexpensive CAD program, JewelSpace packs a lot of punch, says Ira Leibowitz of Scottsdale Fine Jewelers in Scottsdale, Arizona. “This is a powerful tool at an entry-level price,” he says.

One of the things Leibowitz likes about JewelSpace is that it seems to be less library-driven than other programs he investigated. “It’s geared more toward your own creativity,” he says. “It has allowed me to change the style of my designs and given me the ability to make some very creative pieces. We won a couple of awards this year using the program.”

The program’s rendering capability has also been a plus. “I close more custom designs by having a visual aid to show my clients what the finished product will look like,” he says.

Leibowitz found it took about a month for him to reach a level of comfort with the program, although he invested a lot of learning time during that month, he notes. “When you get a program like this, you start dreaming in the program,” he comments. “You close your eyes and you see what you’re going to do.”

The program’s method of modeling designs fits closely with the ways he works at the bench. “If you’re a jeweler and you understand the concept of carving a wax,” you can use this program, he says. “With JewelSpace, you’re using tools just as if you were actually sitting at a bench. Anything you can visualize doing with a file or a drill when you’re carving a wax, you can do in JewelSpace.”

Some users, though, have found the software’s design potential more limited.  “There are a lot of limitations in the shapes you can make,” says Cavagnaro. “My experience was that if you design a lot of very hard edge geometric stuff, it works well. It was a great program at the time [it was introduced]. It sure got me started and it was cheap. But I kind of maxed it out in a short time.”

JewelCAD
For Ryan, JewelCAD’s most critical feature was its relatively short learning curve. “If you’re someone without a lot of CAD experience, it’s great to have a program that’s easy enough to manipulate that it doesn’t drive you insane trying to figure out how to make it work,” he says. “That was something JewelCAD did for us.”

JewelCAD simplifies the CAD process by doing a number of operations in the background, essentially automating some of the steps required to create component parts. While that can limit the user’s control over shapes, it also makes it easier for a beginning CAD designer to master. “I think it was explained to me that JewelCAD was designed to be a CAD program that someone who knew very little about CAD would have an easier time learning,” says Ryan.

Ryan also likes the way JewelCAD allows him to modify components. “Once you’ve made something in the CAD system and rendered it, you’ll show the customer and they’ll want to make part of the ring a little wider, another part a little narrower,” he observes. “JewelCAD gives us the ability to select just that portion of the ring to move it and manipulate it.”

He is less enamored with JewelCAD’s support. The lack of a manual or other documentation has been exacerbated by the fact that the company responds to questions from its Hong Kong headquarters, making delays of more than a day typical. “I can’t e-mail them in the morning and anticipate an answer that day,” says Ryan. “Any answer is going to be tomorrow at best. And there is a language barrier, although it’s better now than it was in the beginning.”

He does appreciate JewelCAD’s ongoing free updates, however, including improvements designed for his particular computer set-up. And although Ryan recently added Matrix to his company’s CAD options, in part because of Matrix’s superior rendering capabilities and greater design flexibility, he anticipates he will continue to use JewelCAD for the foreseeable future. “It’s very versatile and pretty straightforward,” he says. “I am a big proponent of JewelCAD. It’s been a great thing for us, because it’s easy to use.”

3Design Jewel
As a first-time CAD user, Kirk Oz of Creative Designs in Los Angeles found 3DESIGN jewel’s solid models easier to work with than the wire-frame models used in most surface modeling CAD programs. “For a first-time user, it’s important to see what you are drawing,” he explains. “When you work with solids, you can really see what you are doing, versus all wire frames. If you build a box, you see the box.”

Although it has taken him more than a year to become completely comfortable with the program, Oz attributes the long learning curve to his own inexperience in jewelry design, and estimates that an experienced designer would have the program mastered in six months. He found the two days of on-site training that came with the program valuable, particularly because he was allowed to split up the two days. He took a first day of training, practiced what he learned for a month, and then took a second day of training.

According to Oz, the program works in two separate modes, a parts mode using standard geometric shapes, and a sketch mode, where the artist can draw freeform shapes that the program will then translate into a solid shape for use in its parts mode. The combination permits fast creation of simple shapes, such as spheres and squares, with the flexibility of making more complex shapes when desired.

A history tab allows the user to easily backtrack and alter earlier components. “If you want to change something, say instead of 2 by 2 [mm] you want to make [a component] 5 by 5 [mm], you can go back in the history, change it to 5 by 5, and it will recalculate everything that you’ve done after that,” notes Oz.

Although he likes the ring wizard and other building tools in the program, Oz is less satisfied with the program’s parts libraries. “The libraries include pre-built bezels and settings, but one of the problems is that whatever it is, it is—you can size it, but you cannot change it by making parts thicker or thinner,” he explains. “I usually find it easier to make the setting myself, rather than use what they gave me.”

Despite his discontent with the libraries (which he notes the company is in the process of improving), Oz is quite satisfied with his choice, stating, “There’s nothing you can’t do [with 3DESIGN jewel]. You just have to find the formula for it.”