Create your own colours at Cad Centre

Nature may be the best designer but man does not lag far behind in the desire to create the best. For instance how do you generate 16.7 million different colours by combining the colours red, green and blue? With the computer, of course. The human eye is not capable of detecting 16 million different shades of colours. But the computer is. And all this is possible at Ahmedabad Textile Industry’s Research Association’s Computer Aided Designing Centre for textiles. The centre was established in 1998 and has opened new avenues for the local textile manufacturers.

The computer aided design system can combine dots of each colour within each pixel, so that the colour of the pixel on screen is based in the proportions of red to green to blue. Most graphic systems provide 256 gradations of each of these primaries, so that the total range of colours that can be generated is 256x256x256 which equals 16.7 million.

Cad centre (weaving division) incharge Vrunda Doctor said, "The Cad centre at present mainly deals with assignments from the local textile manufacturers." The centre provides services for creating new designs or computerising old designs for woven fabrics (dobby and jacquard) and printed fabrics. Facilities for stimulated fabric print outs in various colour matchings, graphical representation of woven designs with drafting order and peg plans are also available.

"But everything comes at a price. The hardware and the software can be accessed by clients at a nominal cost." Ms Doctor adds.

The old method was to analyse the fabric material and then draw the peg plan, heild plan and the design plan by a skilled worker. The sample was them made on the loom, a process that demanded more time, money and labour.

After 40 years, computer aided textile design replaced the old method. "It is much easier to work with the computer and with all resources like necessary colours needed and other factors related to textile designing. Even the designs for printing and the Weaving part can be done on the computer. The print outs show how will the fabric will, look after the printing or weaving is done and gives a clear idea to the client," Ms Doctor said.

Presently the package used at Atira is Jay Cadtex-NT version Release 1.0. Ms Doctor, who is also the senior scientific officer, explains that the centre is presently designing according to the demands of the’ clients.

"The big industrial houses do not contact us. They have their own designing centres. The smaller traders contact us as they cannot afford the expensive software designing packages. The client approaches us and gives desired designs, which we create here. Then several printouts are taken, assessed and the client is called," she said. After the work is shown to the client the centre gives the final designs. The manufacturing is done by the clients. In addition to the present software, another program will be bought from the US in the next year.

The packages are used by the silk industry though the centre at Bangalore, by the carpet industry through the centre at Panipat and also used in Calcutta, Bhubaneswar and Chennai.

Compiled from local news media