Virtual Prototyping and Collaboration in the Clothing Industry

This chapter takes a look at the real life application of technologies and techniques as discussed in the previous chapters. The first section discusses the emerging markets and technological trends in the clothing industry with regards to virtual clothing technologies. This is followed by a discussion of virtual garment prototyping. This discussion addresses current design and manufacturing paradigms and the online customization of garments, as well as their associated benefits, limitations and future challenges that need to be tackled. A practical example of such online customization is demonstrated by means of MIRALab’s Virtual Try On. The chapter ends with a discussion of the importance of collaboration in the production of garments, addressing such topics as Product Data Management, Product Lifecycle Management and co-design. This is followed by a technical proposal of a virtual garment platform enabling co-design, ranging from low-level communication to higher level user-management.