Design

Design and product creation through Adobe Illustrator or CLO 3D

Designers often start creating new products or collections through applications such as Adobe Illustrator. In PLM for Fashion, you can use an Adobe Illustrator plug-in to create Styles, Materials, and Trims or connect existing AI designs to create new products. This Adobe Illustrator plug-in integrates with PLM for Fashion and is part of the license. Designers can add the necessary basic information and images to the relevant sections.

Alternatively, designers might start using a 3D application, such as CLO 3D, to which PLM for Fashion also integrates through a plug-in. Both application plug-ins work with secured interfaces and logins.

Flexible view management enables you to define which Style, Material, or Trim overview fields are required in the plug-ins, such as any other view in PLM for Fashion, ensuring a seamless workflow whether you work as a designer in the extension plug-ins or directly in PLM for Fashion.

Carry-overs, copies, and mass creation exist because fashion works in seasons and iterations. A coat that sold well last year isn't reimagined from zero, but the coat is carried forward, perhaps with new colors or minor updates.

The ability to carry over a style, copy the style as a variation, or create 50 new options from a template reduces the time spent on the administrative setup of products. This efficiency leaves more time for design decisions.

See the information about the Adobe Illustrator and CLO 3D plug-ins in Integrating external applications.

Designers or others can also start creating their styles, materials, and trims using the application directly.

See the information on building products in Development.

Design and product creation starting in PLM for Fashion

There are multiple ways of creating styles:
  • From scratch
  • Mass creation of styles

    • You can create new styles in bulk

    • You can select one or more source styles to copy from

    • You can make a maximum of 99 copies in one mass creation task, unless you set a different value

    • You cannot copy a cluster if you do not have permission to access the cluster

  • Copy or variation

    • You can use for copying an existing style or for making a copy and tagging it as a variation

    • You can select different clusters to copy. Users with no permission to a certain cluster cannot copy that cluster

    • You define copy templates

    • You can specify if the value of a field is blank for a copy

  • Carryover

    • Use for carrying over an existing style to another season. You can define which colors are carried over

    • You can carry over these items:

      • A style or color to a new season, with either new ID or new season, or same ID or new season

      • A style, including all colors, with either new ID or new season, or same ID or new season

      • Carried-over items are part of the relationship so that you can see where it all originates from

  • Mass carryover
  • Mass update at cluster level

    • Use to replace and or add information to existing styles

    • Users with no permission to access a certain cluster cannot mass update that cluster

  • Mass update at field level
    • You can mass update each field or multiple fields simultaneously, including extended fields
  • The maximum number of mass updates is limited in the system

You can start Materials and Trims in PLM or the plug-ins. You can create these items from scratch or copied items.

Even if created in PLM, you can use and see the created styles, materials, and trims in Adobe Illustrator and CLO Plug-ins, where you can add images, sketches, drawings, notes, and other items.

Style Images

A style is communicated through its visuals as much as through its specification. Different stakeholders need different views of the same product. A buyer wants to see the sales image. A pattern maker needs the technical drawing. A compliance team needs the construction detail.

Instead of managing these images as loose files, the images organized in predefined sections in PLM for Fashion. The image sections mirror the structure of the Adobe Illustrator plug-in and CLO 3D. Therefore, images from those applications are placed automatically in the correct section in PLM.

The annotate function means feedback can be given directly on an image and saved as a new version, keeping the original intact.

A style may have different types of images. We tag those images automatically by having predefined sections in the Image sections, which are also the sections that you can see in the Adobe Illustrator plug-in and Clo3D.

These image types are predefined in the Image section:
  • Style images, including the main image for the list view and the card view
  • Sketches
  • Technical drawings
  • Construction
  • Artwork
  • Style color images, used in the style colorway view and style colorway board
  • Pattern
  • Other images

    In this section, you can also add images that are not the standard default image type for PLM.

    See Document library images and attachments.

In Images, you can add these components in each section:

  • One or more images for each subsection, except colors per style colorway to one image
  • Add comments and notes to the images
  • Annotate the image and save the annotated image as a new image
  • Identify the position such as back, front, and left side
  • Indicator if they should show on a report
  • Indicator if the image is annotated
  • Sequence for reports
  • Replace image keeping the text to the image

The style image sections are also used in Adobe Illustrator plug-in and the 3rd party solution of CLO. From the plug-ins, the mapping of the layers or artboards drives where the sketch, drawing, and artwork image end up in the Style. The images added to a style are visible directly from the PLM document Library and in the style background files stored in Infor Document Management.