Developing a design software for woven fabrics

Fabric design is a process that includes the aesthetic and physical design stages of the product. Physical design includes the properties related to the structure; aesthetic design includes the properties related to the visual and sensory perception. It is necessary to select the structural properties (raw material, yarn number, weave type, etc.) optimally, in order to produce a fabric that provides expected performance properties for a particular usage area. The physical properties of the fabric also affect the aesthetic properties. Therefore, the fabric design studies need to be handled with a holistic approach in order to achieve the targeted performance and aesthetic properties and to produce the designed product in the most realistic way. In recent years, the use of computer aided design systems provides advantages in many sectors as well as textile industry about topics such as cost, quality, time to market, customer satisfaction and competition. In this study, it is aimed to generate a woven fabric design program which takes the fabric design and production process wholly for fabrics woven in dobby looms. The aim of the program is to enable the user to follow the physical and aesthetic design processes and thus to define the aesthetic and physical properties of the final product more accurately at the design stage. In the improved program, it was ensured that the physical properties of the fabric were determined analyzing by the engineering approach and the information related to the production was systematically obtained, while the designer was presented a flexible and easy working environment for the aesthetic design of the fabric.