r/jewelryCAD

Hi everyone,

we currently use Rhino 8 as our main CAD software for jewelry design and are now looking into expanding our workflow with additional plugins or specialized jewelry CAD tools.

So far we have looked at:

• CrossGems
• Grasshopper Gold
• RhinoArtisan
• 3Design

Our current impression:

• CrossGems looks modern and very strong for parametric workflows
• Grasshopper Gold seems extremely flexible and affordable
• RhinoArtisan looks very production-oriented with a fast workflow
• 3Design seems more like the large enterprise / luxury jewelry solution

What matters most for us:

• fast workflow for jewelry design
• parametric workflows and easy variations
• strong Rhino 8 integration
• suitable for small to medium-scale production
• minimal unnecessary overhead
• stable software and active community
• good learning curve
• suitable for training apprentices and junior designers internally
• tools that new employees can realistically learn without extremely long onboarding

Budget is flexible if the productivity increase actually justifies the cost.

Would love to hear real-world experiences from people actually working professionally in jewelry CAD.

A few questions:

1. What are you currently using professionally together with Rhino?
2. Which plugins or workflows saved you the most time?
3. Would you stay with Rhino + plugins, or move directly to something like 3Design or MatrixGold?
4. Are there any underrated plugins or tools we should absolutely look into?

We are also interested in opinions about:

• Panther
• MatrixGold
• Clayoo
• T-Splines-style workflows
• rendering / CAM / 3D print workflows

We want to avoid investing heavily into software that ultimately does not improve productivity much compared to pure Rhino.

Would really appreciate honest feedback from people working in custom jewelry, production, or serial manufacturing.

Need a CAD design done for pendant feel free to dm me

I've been contemplating a move from my current employer and was wondering if anyone knows who might be hiring that would be worth reaching out to. I have almost 15 years of experience in the industry leading and managing CAD teams, specializing in custom jewelry and also designing new products and setting production standards. I have led design efforts pitching and designing new lines for some large global companies and done some cool red carpet pieces with those companies. I also specialize in rendering and animating for e-commerce needs. Looking forward to hearing back. Thanks in advance!

Hello! I am in the GIA comprehensive CAD program, leaning Rhino and Zbrush. I need help selecting the best laptop to purchase. The staff is unfortunately not at liberty to make suggestions to the students :)

I mainly work in wax carving and will be utilizing 3d scanning to import designs and work off the designs. I’m not sure if this helps with suggestions :)

I mostly just need a good laptop lol. Hoping to find out what industry peers suggest.

Thank you!