Designing Shoes Through Computer Imagery

A “shoe designer”, as the name implies, is a specialist in crafting shoes and boots. The last few years have seen a great change in shoe designing; from designing shoes on paper with a drafting board, to using modern technology and designing stilettos to sports shoes and boots catering to an extensive variety of consumers.

How are Shoes Designed?

Shoe designing is a complicated process. It involves the collaboration of a number of people in its designing process such as shoe designers, doctors, craftsmen, scientists and runners. The focus while designing rests on the anatomy of the foot and its movement.

Using computers and video cameras, they focus apart from the limb movement on the foot position and what impact it would cause, and the impact on different grounds such as grass, hard, mud, and hilly areas.Runners are known as pronators (if feet roll on the inside) or supinators (if feet roll to the outside).

Data including this and more such as pressure points, force of impact, patterns of friction are fed into computers and the shoe designing is accomplished.  Calculations are performed and prototypes are made while readying the final design. Shoe design is further based on the mechanical functioning of the human foot. The type and structure of the shoe to be designed is also done on the basis of the intended use of the shoe – by a child, female or a male and for what purpose.

The Software:

Designing shoes via softwares has become pretty much easy. No-Refresh is one such tool available for those looking towards designing and wearing trendy shoes. It’s easy to operate due to its integration with any website, browsers and operating systems.

A few features of this software are the availability of various color options, designs, pictures, symbols etc. and a 3D preview of the designed shoe for better clarity and visualization. Shoe manufacturers use this software to enhance their revenue.

Another one by the name Geomagic 3D software (Geomagic Freeform)  is being used by companies to faster their process of designing shoes with its 3D modeling techniques, design iteration, sample making, virtual prototyping, digital shoe sole molds, 3D foot scans for matching the customer’s foot curves, along with multiple design possibilities for creating the perfect shoes.