[Jewelry making - Article 00505] - [Orchid] Which CAD program is right for me?

[Weldy Lopez]

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Hi everyone,

    I've been looking at Vision Numeric's 3Design Software and the
    Matrix for about a year now. Now, we're ready to make a decision as
    to which program is best suited for our needs. A little background
    about us - we've been in the jewelry business for about 20 years now
    but have finally made the decision to purchasing a CAD software for
    sales presentations and with the future introduction of CAM for
    production. Our biggest concern is the program's ease of use as at
    times, we will be designing the jewelry piece in front of the
    customer. Most of our jewelry lines are fairly simple in design,
    European jewelry similar to the likes of Bulgari and Cartier. We do
    not need engraving, embossing or have a lot of twisted complicated
    designs. Rendering capabilities is a big factor for us, since we will
    be using CAD as a sales & presentation tool. I've also looked at
    JewelCAD for its ease of use but was wondering if 3Design was just as
    easy to learn, but support & documentation is lacking. Rendering
    capabilities are not as good too. 

    Now, a little background on myself. I've always enjoyed designing
    from a very young age and I've grown to grasp software programs
    easily that have a lot of buttons and toolbars, however, I do not
    have an engineering backgound and have trouble typing in command
    prompts. For example, I downloaded google's sketchup last week. And
    within days, I was able to produce a retail store mock up w/ relative
    ease. I've tried other CAD programs and it just left me frustrated.
    Sketchup was easy to learn because you could manipulate the shapes by
    clicking and dragging the object directly, not through a series of
    commands and mathematical computations. 

    >From what I understand, Matrix is built on Rhino, which is an
    engineering tool, but has builders that make the design task easier.
    I've repeatedly asked for a demo too, but did not receive any. It
    seems like Gemvision is very reluctant on giving any demos. Other
    users have been saying that it is a very hard program to learn.
    Though it has a lot of users and superior customer service, I just
    don't have the time to learn a complicated program. I have yet to see
    an online demo from 3Design. 

    I welcome everyone's opinions on these two programs to gain insight
    on which high-end jewelry CAD program we should be using as this will
    be a major investment on our part. Currently in Vancouver Canada,
    hopefully, someone could show me a demo in person. I'm gonna need to
    make my decision in a week so all your help will be much appreciated.
    Thanks a lot. 

Best,
Elesio
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