Design using Illustrator and other Adobe products

Helloooo Orchid Friends,

Orchid Rocks!!! Karen thanks for sharing your letter with us I really
enjoyed your enthusiasm.I would like to call you off-line. I have
worked in our trade for about the past 25 years as a diamond and
color setter but have recently ventured into Plat. fabrication and it
has opened a whole new world for me.I started in the trade in N.Y.C.
and progressed to work for some high end manufacturers and in that
environment you would work in a singular trade function ie. Model
Maker , Jeweler , Setter and so on for many years until your level of
expertise allowed you exposure to very well made and expensive work.
I have been very happy but now need to progress and branch out a bit
. Plat. fab . and my current employer has made this possible. Sooo
whats this got to do with design ? I am hoping to create a working
shop drawing to measured specs, as a reference before I start bending
"Dear Old Mr. Molinas Metal" . I first started looking at Auto Cad
but found it was far to deep for this old guy and with further
research found that Illustrator was vector based and I would be able
to draw within mm.constraints and might possibly progress to somthing
acceptable for our clientele , soooooo once again I call out to the
Orchid community for some help. Does anyone out there use this
program for Jewelery design and have you been happy with it? Any
feedback would be very helpful and much appreciated.

Thanks so much and I hope you all are well!!!
Peace Karl

Karl,

I use Illustrator for design work. If you are just looking to

produce 2D renderings then by using Illustrator and possibly
Photoshop if you really want to spice up the presentation you will
have a good set of tools. Illustrator will allow very precise
drawing and if you get a plug in for it called CADtools from a
company called Hot Door (http://www.hotdoor.com) you can add
dimensioning and much more numerically precise drawing tools to the
Illustrator program. Many Community Colleges and private
institutions offer beginning Illustrator and Photoshop classes and
there are literally hundreds of books to help you learn more. The
one caveat is that you still need to know or learn how to draw and
render. These programs are great tools but they are still just tools
they don’t do it for you they just make it easier to do.

Jim

Hi Karl – I have been using the original Adobe product (I have an
older version of the workshop) for years and love it, love it, love
it!! I mostly use it for editing and working with drawings that I
have already made by hand and it is just so easy is ridiculous!! I
haven’t upgraded because I can still use what I have, even tho I now
have an XP machine, but if what is on the market is anything like
their original product, then it’s worth the investment. Write to me
offline if you want more specifics.

Laura Wiesler
StoneHouse Studio