Optitex History

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The Company Description of Its Time

Optitex specialises in the development of innovative, easy-to-operate 2D and 3D fashion design software. Its Microsoft Windows based packages cover the full pattern-room workflow: digitizing, pattern engineering, grading, marking, and advanced automatic nesting. They are specifically designed, the filing says, to meet the needs of today's manufacturers of industrial fabrics, apparel, upholstery, transportation, composites, home furnishings, and other sewn products. That industry list is the first thing a researcher should notice, because it explains the software's design priorities: a pattern system that must serve a garment factory in the morning and a composites shop in the afternoon is built around geometry, material efficiency and file compatibility rather than around any single trade's habits.

An Open System, Sold Around the World

The OptiTex open architecture system comes amply equipped with a multitude of import and export formats, enabling users to interface with a wide range of software and hardware. Customers, the filing continues, enjoy the benefits of selecting hardware that fits their company's needs in terms of performance and price, and OptiTex also offers the convenient option of purchasing a completely integrated CAD package including the software solutions, a digitizer, and a pen or ink jet plotter. In plain terms, a factory could buy software alone and keep its existing equipment, or buy the whole pattern room in one package.

OptiTex fashion design software products are sold and supported around the world through certified distributors and OEMs, and the solutions were available in nineteen languages at the time of filing, with more to come. OptiTex LTD reported more than 20,000 installations worldwide. Software that must be taught, serviced and upgraded locally cannot travel on downloads alone, so the certified-distributor network and the nineteen-language interface are not marketing decoration; they are the support structure that makes a specialised CAD system usable in factories on several continents.

The Customer List and the 2008 News Trail

The filing is proud of its installed base, and names it at length. Apparel and uniform names include ATSI, Best Manufacturing, Cherokee Uniforms, Oxford Industries - Li & Fung, the US Army and the US Navy, Target Corporation, The Marena Group, Land's End, Kohl's, COACH Leather, ABS by Allen Schwartz, Teamwork Apparel, Brooks Sports, Gildan, Parachute De France and Tyco Toys. Aeronautics companies include Birdair, Boeing, Eurocopter and Irvine Aerospace. In the automotive industry, the list runs to BMW, Porsche, Toyota, Audi, Johnson Controls and Prevent, among many more satisfied customers. A single pattern platform cutting shirt cloth, parachutes, aircraft interiors and car seats is the strongest evidence in the profile for the sewn-products breadth claimed at its head.

Below the profile, the historical record preserves ten dated fashion technology articles from 2008, and every one is carried in this page's kept links: the multi language interface for fashion designers in October, a 3D technology expert speaking at NVISION in August, two NVIDIA partnerships in June and July, new features in the 3D Runway Designer 10 in May, a partnership with Kathy Heyndels in April, the Luidi partnership and worldwide network expansion, green design, dynamic fashion delivered with Nolcha, and a February piece joining the Israel Textile & Fashion Association and the Peres Center for Peace. Read in order, they show a software company spending 2008 on graphics power, languages and 3D - the same three themes its product description leads with.

Photos

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