An On-line CAD System for Clothing Thermal Functional Engineering Design

Designing clothing with high thermal functional performance by PC based CAD system, is an extremely demanding endeavor not only in terms of computer configuration but also due to users' professional knowledge background. A novel method, based on Internet technology, is reported in this paper. The method provides designers and consumers, without special technical knowledge, a convenient platform to preview flexible design concepts with different clothing styles and materials for different body shapes and wearing situations according to individual design specifications. The network-centric feature releases users from expensive computer configuration and system maintenance by allowing both the design specification and results display to be completed through the browser while the complicated engineering computation is executed on a server. Below we describe the supporting engineering database developed to facilitate the design specification. Then we present simulation results in the form of image that help the users to preview and determine whether the thermal performance of the clothing is good enough and then iteratively improve their design according to the feedback.