Simulating traditional textile heritage motifs by applying CAD-CAM-CAE tool for furniture decoration

Abstract

As an interaction of multiple domains including design, the furniture industry may valorise in furniture ornamentation the traditional motifs, and could encourage the creativity of designers to develop original products with a modern design, based on the digitalized technology. The article presents an example of applying CAD-CAM-CAE tools for analysing the possibility of transposing traditional motifs from the textile heritage to the furniture decoration, and to select the appropriate CNC routing method and tool in order to obtain an ornament as close as possible to the original one. Traditional motifs (rose, tulip, bird, North Star) selected from the textile heritage of Ţara Bârsei - a historical and ethnographic region of Transylvania - were drawn in a digital format, using CorelDraw and AutoCAD programs, and then imported for a simulation of CNC routing process on wooden materials, using the software vCarvePro 9.519 developed by Vectric, with two types of tools and two processing methods, namely engraving (Engrave) and carving (VCarve). Following the simulation and the analysis of the obtained images, both visually and by ImageJ software, it was assessed which method is suitable for each ornament, considering also the processing times indicated by the simulation process of the models.