CAD is good at producing jewellery only a computer can like. Humans are different matter.
CAD techniques can be used to design many different kinds of
jewelry; the only limitation is the imagination of the maker. While a
beginner at CAD will tend to make things that are simplest for the
system to do, much like any beginning jeweler with a piece of metal
and a hammer, a more skilled and experienced designer will be able to
get it to do a lot more.
Parallel between CAD and hand carving is nonsensical. If hand carving suppose to have artistic content, CAD is nowhere close to what is required.
Art doesn’t reside in the hand. All it does is hold a tool, which,
under the control of a creative mind (which is where the art comes
from), is able to manipulate the tool to create various forms.
Whether the tool is a hammer, a chisel, a mouse, or a sophisticated
force-feedback stylus, what puts artistic content into the material
is the mind of the artist, not the hand.
Let's for argument sake assume that a client has artistic sensibility of a door knob and do not mind chunky trinkets under the guise of jewellery. I am sure that CAD is great at such applications, but so what. Do you want to put CAD to test ? Go to my website and take a look at Eternity Ring preview http://www.ganoksin.com/gnkurl/1f0 Than see if you can reproduce it. I have been offering this test to CAD aficionados for several years. They usually come back with excuses that it is not clear from the video the exact shape of the ring. So to eliminate the excuse I created special page on my website, where one can see the CAD model from every angle.
CAD can facilitate the creation of “chunky trinkets” if that’s what
the designer wants to make. It can also be used to design things that
are too delicate to wear. The fact that a particular technique has
been used unsuccessfully in the past does not mean it can’t be used
successfully in the future.
While CAD techniques are useful for many design challenges, there
are always going to be some tasks that are best done in other ways,
including hand fabrication. But it’s easy enough to come up with
other “tests” that computer-assisted tools, or stamping presses, or
lathes can accomplish faster and better. This proves nothing either.
The best use for CAD, or any new technology for that matter, is not
in duplicating something that’s already been done some other way, but
in coming up with new things that couldn’t have been done before at
all.
People have been making jewelry by hand for thousands of years.
Computer assisted design tools have been used for this purpose for
about twenty years now. If they can’t yet do absolutely everything
that can be done by hand, that’s hardly surprising. But there are
not many techniques for hand-fabricating jewelry that haven’t been
thoroughly explored, while new computer-driven tools and methods for
using them are coming out constantly, faster than most of us can
keep up with. I can understand that some people with a lot invested
in old ways of doing things feel threatened by all this, but for
those who can keep their minds open to new possibilities, it’s an
exciting time to be alive.
Andrew Werby