Delcam plc : Digital 3D Design Contest for Brazil’s Footwear Industry

SENAI, Brazil's National Service for Industrial Education, and its technology partners will present awards to the best footwear designers using Delcam CRISPIN's Shoemaker software on March 29 at the SENAI Bagueira Marcio Leal, Franca-SP.  During the event SEACAM, with support from its English partner Delcam Plc and US based 3D Systems, will present the 2012 version of CRISPIN Shoemaker and the latest 3D Printing and Rapid Prototyping technology for the footwear industry.

The event is part of the project SHOEMAKER CHALLENGE - 3D Digital Design for the Footwear Industry - which has been held over the last year under the coordination of Senai Bagueira Marcio Leal and its partners.  The project aims to spread and encourage the use of 3D digital design with CAD in the footwear sector, by enabling footwear designers, teachers and technicians to use software to create footwear, through lectures, workshops and training at SENAI.

At the awards ceremony, presentations will be given on the importance of digital design for the development of the shoe industry by Ian Ravenscroft, a specialist in CRISPIN ShoeMaker, and Peter Leon, International Business Development Manager at Delcam.  New 3D Printing and Rapid Prototyping technologies applied to the footwear industry of 3D Systems / ZPrinters® will be presented by Claudia Beraldo - Seacam Product Manager.

There will be awards for top students.  The top student will be offered an international stage for his/her work by SEACAM and Delcam in Birmingham, UK.  The students that present the next two best ideas developed during the Workshop will have a 3D coloured prototype of their work produced during the competition using 3D printing technology - ZPrinter®.

The committee judging the projects will comprise footwear industry professionals such as Sandro de Castro Lopes - Designer of Grupo Sândalo, Tarcisio de Oliveira - Industrial Manager Calçados Pipper, Milena P. Toledo Pugliesi - Development of Grupo Amazonas  and Talita Fidelis - Designer of Calçados Feminino Orcade.

According to Mr. Fabio Sergio Carrion, director of SENAI Bagueira Marcio Leal: "To succeed in the highly competitive market, it is necessary for footwear companies to use design, get ahead of their competitors.  Currently, most footwear companies design footwear by first using drawings, and then apply software for vectorization and image processing, without having an interface with CAD.  The implementation of this project will speed the process of creating drawings of shoes, because it allows designers to develop the designs and drawings directly onto the last, with illustrations of shadow, light and depth.  It becomes possible for the designer to develop a technical model of the mould and then make the footwear sample by prototyping.  Solutions like these give micro and small enterprises levels of competitiveness similar to the larger enterprises by allowing the release of new collections of shoes in the same time-scale as the major competitors, because the development process is reduced and the use of resources for research and development is optimized."

28 March 2012