Advanced computer aided technologies for design automation in footwear industry

In the footwear industry there is growing methodological research linking advanced computer-based technologies to the traditional manufacturing process. This paper deals with the automation of shoe design phases and describes a computer aided design system that brings together theories and tools from geometric modeling, image processing, and reverse engineering. At first, the paper reviews the current technologies used for creating new shoe models. Then the paper presents an approach based on shoe 3D virtual modeling in order to overcome the traditional time-consuming manual operations. The approach is concretized into dedicated tools able to automatically perform design of the last shape model and flattening of the shoe styling curves represented in the virtual prototype. The modeling tool uses 3D geometric rules derived from the analysis of strategies adopted by skilled manual operators, while the styling curves recognition and flattening are based on specific image processing algorithms and geometrical deformation rules. Experimental results show a good compromise between quality results and modeling time.