The time frame since Jacquard design began to be done with a computer is now more than twenty years. This paper reviews what is the current state and attempts to predict what the next ten years will bring.

This paper will show how the designer can keep pace with the flexibility which the new (jacquard) heads and looms give us. It will show how the sampling is being done electronically today and how the customer, artist, technician and the weaver will work together more closely in the future.

JACQUARD DESIGN HISTORY

Jacquard design has gone through two major phases in the twenty years since the computer was introduced in the mid 1970's. Pre computer designing process: a. An artist drawing onto paper suitable designs. b. A technical (stylist) then translated the artwork into a design that could be woven. c. A technician then punched the cards directly from the technical (stylist's) drawing.

Control Points for the Above Workflow 1. The artwork needs to match the fashion of the day. 2. The expertise needed to control the technicians translation. 3. The final woven cloth after all the [samples] have been made.

First computerized designing solution: a. An artist drawing on paper - the same as before b. A technical (stylist) translated the artwork - the same a before. c. The technician who punched the cards now used a scanner to read in the technical design. The improvement was that the technical design was visible on a monitor and so could be controlled and corrected.

Control Points for the Above Workflow 1. The artwork needs to match the fashion of the day. 2. The expertise needed to control the technicians translation. 3. The final woven cloth after all the [samples] have been made. 4. The design could now be modified quickly.

The first stage of the computerization mainly ran from the mid 1970's to the mid 1980's.

Second computerized designing solution: a. An artist drawing on paper - the same as before. b. The artists sketch was read directly onto the scanner and special software was used to help separate the sketch into a technical drawing. This drawing was controlled by the skilled technician and corrected. The card punching became simpler and more automated. c. A new process was introduced firstly by Sophis which was called "Simulation." A simulation is the technical design, with its extra data -weaves and loom information - translated into a picture that is similar to the final woven cloth.

Control Points for the Above Workflow 1. The artwork needs to match the fashion of the day. 2. The technicians translate the design into a weaveable product. 3. Simulation of the final woven cloth 4. Make the final woven cloth.

This stage of the computerization ran from the late 1980's to the mid 1990's. However, it must be recognized that there are many sites where the first stage is still in operation and even sites where the two stages co-exist.

INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL TRENDS

Personnel: The industry used to be technically driven. Now it is design driven. This means that more and more, (companies have opted) to take designers from art schools (instead of textile technical schools). As a result, they're design skills are good, but knowledge of the limits as well as the possibilities of jacquard (and dobby) are unknown.

Design Life Times: The design which sold one million (yards) per year has become a thing of the past. Today, the runs are shorter and designs are valid for shorter times. A private survey made from data in the region of Kortrijk (Belgium) showed that the number of designs made in 1990 were three times more than in 1980, but the number of (yards) woven per design was only one third the length.

Head and Loom Design: The jacquard heads are getting bigger every year. Today it is relatively easy to find a loom which will have a pattern repeat of 1.4 meters. The looms are faster and run with high efficiencies with only one weaver per 20 machines. This meas the labor cost per meter goes down, but the capital cost stays high. An ideal combination for high labor cost, high skill countries such as in Europe and the USA. Networking: When the jacquards went electronic, it was only a matter of time before they were networked. It is still a surprise that only a small portion of the total weavers are networked today. The network has two obvious advantages: lower labor cost and less errors. But, the real advantage is that the cost of design change is lower and so the firm can make even shorter run lengths without reducing profits.

Third computerized designing solution is current today and is expected to run into the middle of the next decade. The trend is to have more and more designs while the personnel has less detailed jacquard knowledge.

To overcome these two trends, Sophis has moved to a new structure in our software.

The first simplification which Sophis made was to have the design problem split up into different areas of expertise and to make it in such a way that each part works independently from the other but still uses the relevant data from each area.

These areas include a) the technical information: Yarns loom information Qualities/constructions weaves & weave families b) The design information This means that the knowledge in each area has only to be in one place, but the information is available to the other people in the design process without them having to understand how to make the files or to have the in depth knowledge.

THE DESIGNER

Designers work in many different ways and it is important not to limit them. The Sophis system is designed to allow them to move between the traditional design methods to the new way at any time in the process.

The Idea Phase - Scanning and Editing The new software from Sophis allows the user to work in directly on the scanned image. This means the user can work with designs in 24 bit format (16.7 million colors). In this mode they are operating purely as artists. The can mix and merge designs, scan in pieces and join them together into one design, cut and paste and use many other design tools. The limits of the conventional jacquard design process are not impose at this stage and so, the creativity of the artist is free to flower and bloom.

The Woven Phase - Translating the Idea into Fabric 1. Preparing the design The pattern can be automatically reduced into a limited number of colors and into the correct resolution for weaving. To do this, the program refers to the Quality Files (see Paulina's article on this elsewhere in this newsletter) and works out the correct resolution and size that the loom needs. This means that the designer does not need to be bothered with the mathematics.

2. Translating the design The design is now automatically converted into a woven article. Again, using the information in the Quality File, the program can automatically choose the weaves and display the pattern as a (simulation of the final) cloth. We have a special program for drawing right on the simulation.

What now is the situation? The artist is effectively sitting at the loom. With the movement of the pen, the artist can change the cards and get a whole new sample of the cloth. On this simulation, the designer is ale to change and correct the design, experiment with different weaves, and recolor the fabric.

The major point is that the artist does not have to understand the actual jacquard process. They do not have to understand because the computer is translating the design into cloth in "real time" so they are designing cloth as cloth, not as artwork which will later be completely changed in order to be woven.

FUTURE STEPS - What does this lead to down the road?

The first major change is that we will be able to cope with the expanding design needs by using artists. Of course we need also the technical people to back them up with new qualities and effects, but now the technical person will be able to help many artists because they only have to prepare the quality files - not train the artists.

The second major change is that the artist working within the framework of the quality file needs not be at the weaving site. This means that the artist could be anywhere and, in fact, could be at the customer.

This would mean that the weaver could get back to doing the job they are good at, namely weaving, and let the designer/stylist do more direct work with the customers. The closer the designer is to the customer, the closer the art will be to the people!

The third change that could occur is that the consumer could themselves make the design. Maybe in the future (people) will design and color their own cloths. Of course, as many people are comfortable wearing the same as other peer group people there still will be the necessity for guides within the to enable people to select and modify so that the final result is acceptable. The production will, of course, be made automatically by machines.

Is this one of the ways people in the future will have gone through a full cycle and come back to the past? Before the industrial revolution each garment was different, and designed by and for the user. Is this where we are going again? Maybe the future people will need all the extra leisure time to design their cloths, food, etc.