A CAD system for multi-style thermal functional design of clothing

Designing clothing with good thermal functional performance is very demanding and time-consuming if we follow traditional design methods. An innovative method consisting of a CAD system, allowing the designer to perform multi-style clothing thermal functional design on a customized virtual human body, is presented in this paper. The new functionalities of the virtual system provide the abilities to perform intelligent design of different clothing styles and materials for different body parts according to individual design requirements, namely design of various categories of clothing, such as hat, coat, trousers, gloves and shoes in the same design scheme. The designed clothing can be worn on a virtual human body and set in various wearing scenarios. The thermal behaviors in the human body-clothing-environment are simulated to predict the thermal performance of clothing and thermal response of the human body at multi-parts. 2D/3D visualization and animation of the simulation results are presented to help the designers to preview and determine whether the thermal performance of clothing is satisfactory and then obtain feedback to improve their designs iteratively. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.