A new grading functionality to give faster, more accurate sizing of footwear soles is included in an upgraded CAD product added to a comprehensive CAD/CAM suite of software.

Delcam will preview the forthcoming release of its PS-Shoemaker software for footwear design and manufacture at the SIMAC exhibition to be held in Bologna, Italy, from 19th to 22nd April. The main enhancement will be new grading functionality to give faster, more accurate sizing of soles. The new version will also incorporate the new Smart Surfacing technology from Delcam's PowerSHAPE CAD software, which gives much easier creation of designs from wireframe data, and a much broader range of data translation options.

Delcam is already firmly established as the leading provider of CAD/CAM software to the footwear industry.

It is the only supplier offering an integrated design, manufacture and inspection system for both uppers and soles.

The new release of PS-Shoemaker is expected to reinforce the company's leading position.

Grading is the special scaling process used in the footwear industry to produce shoes of different sizes.

It does not simply apply a single mathematical expansion but involves a complex series of relationships, depending on whether men's, women's or children's shoes are involved.

Consistent grading of the last, sole, tread pattern and heel is essential to produce accurately matched components.

Better-matched components ease assembly and finishing operations, and give a higher quality product that is less likely to fail in use.

The new release of PS-Shoemaker provides faster and more accurate grading methods for all standard international sizing systems.

Improvements have also been made to group grading; the ability to fix the dimensions of specified components, while the remainder of the design is changed to give the required range of sizes.

This allows designers to use the same size of airbag in a number of shoe sizes or to lock the shape and size of an area of the shoe so that standard logos or other decorations can be used on different sizes.

The other key improvement to PS-Shoemaker is the inclusion of Smart Surfacing technology from Delcam's PowerSHAPE CAD program.

Like other surface modellers, the software has always provided a number of alternative methods for constructing a surface from a given set of lines, arcs or points.

The user has had to choose between a number of solutions to pick the result that is most appropriate for the particular design.

With Smart Surfacing, the choice of method is made automatically by the software to give the best possible surface.

If the user is unhappy with the automatic selection, or is simply curious to see other options, he can scroll through the alternative solutions.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Smart Surfacing is that the software's selection is updated automatically as extra information is added to the design.

As any additional lines or points are inserted into the model, the chosen surfacing method is reviewed and the surface regenerated if an alternative solution has become more appropriate.

The new data translation options in PS-Shoemaker include the ability to import or export the DXF and pdf formats.

This will make it easier to read 2D data into the software and to export drawings and illustrations for comment by customers and retailers.

Export of 2D data to cutting machines has also been improved, with support now provided for a wider range of equipment.