Today, organizations are looking more and more for faster solutions in surface design. For 30 years, Pointcarre Textile Software has provided a complete package for Printing, Knitting, and Weaving aimed at Fashion, Home Furnishing, and Technical Industry. Whichever Pointcarre modules you decide to use are integrated into a single application, native Mac and Windows. “Our customers understand the advantages of Pointcarre through a long partnership with us. We have added to the last few releases “fast presentation” tools that allow any designer to make boards and sales pages with a single click,” says Steve Greenberg, CEO of Pointcarre. “You can also use our new print tools to create your own presentation boards/pages and save them as templates. Colorways, repeats and color chips are all selected and managed on the layouts with ease.”

According to Steve, the final product of the CAD software needs to be an accurate representation of the fabric or product. “Our fabric simulations use a combination of yarn libraries, bump maps and Pantone Textile® or CSI® color specs to give the user the most realistic quality and effects of what the fabric will be like after production. It has become even more important with the adoption of 3D software and avatars to promote the product in its final form.”

Staying at the forefront of technology, Pointcarre has consistently released a new version every year since its inception in the early ’80s. The company’s mission has been to provide the best CAD product at an affordable cost for the prominent designer or small design house. “We have our own development team and since we are privately owned, we can decide on the course of all the new development. We always take our cues from our current and potential clients,” explains Steve. “Being the first textile CAD native on PC & Mac was one of those ideas. We are constantly developing for both new OS so our users on either platform will have access to Pointcarre. Users have always provided us with an excellent direction on new tools and features. Whether it’s a new design tool or something for presentation and  simulations. We take their ideas and make them a reality in Pointcarre.” 

Steve and his team genuinely listen to the market. They have users in textiles, home furnishings, medical fields, automotive and more. This allows them to keep up on the pulse of many industries and understand their evolving design needs. Thus, the addition of Swatch Book – a speedy way to display designs and create presentation/color swatch boards at the click of a button. Going back to their simulations, the addition of bump maps allows the fabric to look as good as it can when placed on a 3D avatar. They have partnered with many of the current 3D technology companies to allow their images to be easily used inside their products. 

One of the company’s latest new tools is Color Separations. “We saw many clients struggling with the issues presented in color seps with traditional and digital printing. We resolved those issues with easyto-use color reduction and separation algorithms that allow designers to focus on the actual design of the artwork and then easily generate screens and seps for spot color, gravure, roller printing and more,” elucidates Steve. “Another feature of the newest release is Portfolio. They can create a design, separate colors, and show all color variations. Then just click “send to,” and you will find creative templates. Each one fully customizable!”

Specific case studies and the benefits of Pointcarre solutions are common. One case was a client drawing “lines” on their design documents from each color chip to the exact color in the design. Pointcarre developed a tool that “researches and finds” to automatically draw a line to spec the colors of a design palette. The client can then edit those lines to ensure they are placed where you like them for the mill. “When the pandemic hit we were inundated with many clients that were suddenly working from home and did not have access to their licenses at work. Pointcarre can be USB or Cloud-based,” adds Steve. “It was an easy decision to immediately set up all these designers at home on Cloud-based licenses so they can continue to work uninterrupted. It was a very fast and easy solution that clients appreciated. We even made several new sales and replaced some competitor’s licenses due to our ability to act fast. The Cloud-based licenses also allowed all our colleges that have Pointcarre to setup students to continue their classes at home and not need to be on campus at the computer labs.” 

In another instance, a client had bought a highend printer and was not getting the desired color. “We went in and created a compatible postscript print format to give them the best color output possible on that printer. This became coupled with the fact that they were also all working from different locations and needed to have the same color no matter where they were sending the file from,” says Steve. “Another is the use of simulations in 3D applications. We make sure our files are globally compatible and  can be dragged and dropped directly to any avatar and mapped to show the best representation of that fabric on that product. We have worked directly with several vendors to access their APIs so the designer can then click on that fabric and edit in Pointcarre, the fabric is then updated on the 3D model.”

The key to Pointcarre’s success lies in the knowledge of its clients. “We have continued to provide face to face training services over the web. Our One-on-One hands-on training allows for a session that is focused to the designers’ specific needs. We then elaborate on that, and they quickly see how Pointcarre will make their jobs easier,” says Steve. “We also provide Pointcarre Academy, a worldwide e-learning courses which we add to consistently. The Academy has revolutionized our training process.” Training sessions no longer must be confined to the classroom or a 9-5 workweek. Pointcarre users can log in any time of the day or night and view the courses to sharpen their skills or increase their knowledge of Pointcarre. 

Pointcarre clients list grows daily within the international markets, and even when recruiting locally, the talent pool is ethnically diverse. “We are not just local in the US. We have clients all over the world in Europe, Asia and more. Pointcarre is already available in English, French, Chinese, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese,” says Steve proudly. “We have recently added new languages such as Turkish, Japanese and Russian. We continue to develop new languages to enable everyone to work in Pointcarre with their native language version.” I