Designing dresses and costumes is an art that requires a lot of creativity. The fashion trends keep changing, and if you are a designer, you have to come up with fresh designs that please the customers. It becomes tough to design clothes because most people don’t know what they want, and others might not look right in what they want to wear. Technology is here to help the designers too. With clothing design software, they can come up with patterns and designs and get their 3D previews. This is much better than the old school way of sketching the designs with paper and pen because they give you the exact idea of how a particular design will look once you are done with it. Here are Top 10 Free Clothing Design Software for Mac users. Must Read: -
1. Fashion Toolbox
With Fashion Toolbox, you can design clothes, textiles, and accessory designs. It has many CAD tools and design export options. You can even trace the design from a photo and create new designs from it. It has a fabrics clip art gallery and design specs workbook which will guide you through the lessons for casting and fitting of your designs. The trial version can be downloaded and then upgraded to the complete Toolbox version to benefit from all the features.
2. eDraw Max
eDraw has a straightforward and flexible software experience to offer for fashion designers. All the templates are vector so that modification can be done easily. There are many skin tones and other accessories that can be chosen to go with the clothing designs. With drag and drop tools, the designing is very easy even for beginners. You can also choose sub-element fashion and change the color or design. And apart from this, there are many templates and sketching tools to choose from. Must Read: - 10 Best Software to Create Fabulous T-Shirt Designs
3. Digital Fashion Pro
Digital Fashion Pro comes with a training guide so that you can get familiar with the software without seeking much help from anywhere else. You can also download the trial version. In this, 200 different templates can be customized and redesigned. About 110 digital fabrics can be chosen as the raw material for the clothing. And the software has a unisex approach to keep up with the latest trends and presentations. Still if you find the software difficult to use, there are training videos with step by step illustrations.
4. Cameo Apparel Pattern Software
Cameo Apparel Pattern Software is a complete package for designers. You can buy the entire package or get different modules. There are separate design software modules for children’s clothing, men’s clothing and similar design suites to select. So depending on the type of clothes you design, you can get the perfect software.
You can get models of custom sizes, make plans and drawings and other specifications on the design. With support for printing, you can print or save the design readily once you are done.
5. Designer Pro Apparel Edition
You can draft designs on 3D models with Designer Pro Apparel Edition. A 3D preview of the design can be seen. The created models can be exported as PDFs with added password security.
Latest designs and all color combinations and customization can be done either by using the templates or by creating new designs on your own. You can calculate the price of the materials and get estimations of the finished product.
6. FashionLab Studio
FashionLab Studio is a fast tool for designers. It has all the resizing and rotation/transformation tools. You can also draw patterns with lines and curves. The software is also suitable for making custom T-Shirt designs. The finished design can be imported as an image (JPG and TIFF) or in PDF format. The software has basic vector design tools but is not suitable for advanced designers.
7. Dress Assistant
You can catalog the entire wardrobe on your laptop and see what models fit the best. You can upload photos from other devices and see what they look like. The software has a very intuitive interface. There are 12 wardrobes with six each for men and women. You can save the designs and sync them with all your Apple devices using iCloud support. The software has many items, outfits, and events that can be associated with multiple wardrobes. You can duplicate outfits and sort them manually or automatically.
8. Optitex
Optitex is a brilliant software with 3D designing and creation suites. It can also be used by sewn product manufacturers and designers alike. It has a straightforward and interactive interface with marker making suite and cutting room optimization suite. The software is powerful with such features that it is worth the money spent buying it. You can also get the trial version. The finished design can be downloaded as an image or as PDF.
9. eTelestia
eTelestia is a CAD program with which you can create and modify fashion and clothing designs. It has easy to draw design tools which use AB Fashion Design template. There are zoom and measuring tools in the working area so that you can create the designs with details and perfection. Technical drawing and virtual fitting are just a couple of other features of this product. You can create your style library and work on multiple designs simultaneously. There is help with examples for beginners, and it supports multiple languages.
10. Browzwear
The simulations using Browzwear software are so realistic because they make use of many factors such as weight, mass and fabric type to come up with the previews. It has V-Stitcher for designers to create new patterns, V-Styler to attend to the colors and designs and V-Viewer for merchants to see the different finished apparels. All of these are integrated to make your work easier. They can also be used with other software packages such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.
Bottom Line
These clothing design software will be of great help to students and fashion designers. You have the freedom to create the designs from scratch or use the templates and add modifications and enhancements. The design ideas in your mind can be converted into products or be shared with others for reviews and appreciations. Virtual studios can cut your costs as you can see the previews of your designs with originality even before you manufacture them. For students, who cannot have a fully functional designer studio at their early stage of learning, such designer software will be of much help. Even if you are not a professional designer, you can get some of these trial versions and create that one lovely dress for a special occasion.
Older Mac Os X Software
Altium Designer by Altium Limited is a piece of software that was created to help you design PCB (printed circuit boards). Unfortunately, there is no version of Altium Designer for Mac available on the market, so, you might want to try other applications to help you with your designs.