3D printing has taken the world by storm in the past two decades and why not? It has replaced the daunting task of molding with a much more efficient one – 3D printing. Thanks to modern 3D printers, creating jewellery design has never been this easier. All you need to do now is to load your 3D designs into a 3D printer and let the printer do the rest of the work. How simple is that?
However, you still have to design a 3D model of your jewellery in 3D modeling software. 3D software will help you with modeling your jewellery designs. In that case, choosing the best 3D software based on your needs and requirements is an absolute necessity, let’s look for the same in this article.
1. RhinoGold
RhinoGold is another version of one of the most popular 3D modeling software Rhino 3D which is quite popular amongst architects and industrial designers from all across the globe. Since RhinoGold is dedicated to jewellery designing primarily, it’s stuffed with features that’ll help you in creating your jewellery designs with the topmost efficiency.
RhinoGold has features that are specifically tailored for jewellery designers to help them create exceptionally detailed jewellery designs. It has a vast range of jewellery components that you can combine to create your version of the jewellery. You can modify preloaded designs of rings, bracelets, halos, pendants, etc, to sharpen your skills. Furthermore, you can create jewellery from scratch to showcase your art and creativity to the world.
2. Jewellery CAD Dream
Jewellery CAD Dream is one of the most polished and feature-packed software designed exclusively for aspiring and professional jewellery designers. It has the best-in-class features to take your jewellery design experience to the extreme. Featuring an LED DLP projector for higher accuracy and quality, Jewellery CAD Dream can satisfy your needs as a beginner or a professional jewellery designer.
The Floating glass technology and Protective Layering System (PLS) in the software enable you to work on even the most minute details of your jewelry (for example, its shine and smoothness). Moreover, you can even create a virtual inventory within the software that allows you to keep track of your past work that you can use in your future projects.
In addition, this feature is helpful for you as a beginner as it’ll allow you to analyze how much you’ve improved over time. Jewellery CAD Dream is one-of-a-kind jewelry modeling software that anyone can easily recommend to beginners and professionals alike.
3. Adobe Illustrator
Even if you’re an absolute fresher to the design industry, it’s highly unlikely that you’ve never heard of Adobe Illustrator. That’s because Adobe Illustrator is so versatile that designers from almost every industry love it, jewelry included. Adobe is known to produce market-dominating software, the legacy carries on with Adobe Illustrator.
Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics software that uses mathematical calculations instead of pixels to draw the image. How does it benefit designers? There is absolutely 0% loss in quality no matter how deep you zoom in, turning your designs into high-definition pieces of art.
The software is primarily used for drawing 2D lines, but they can later be visualised in 3D for better illustration. It features some of the handiest tools a design software can ever provide you with, e.g., fills & stroke, vector, gradients, pathfinder, brushes, etc. Furthermore, you can use different rendering techniques such as isometric drawing, 3-way diagrams, and handmade painting, depending upon your preferences.
4. MatrixGold
MatrixGold is one of the most recommended 3D software in the design industry, particularly jewelry designing. Although the software has a rather steep learning curve, the features it comes up with can compensate for that. Exclusively developed for all the jewellery designers out there, MatrixGold is as feature-packed as RhinoGold but has a bit more jewelry designer-friendly interface.
This software excels in 3D printing jewellery. Utilizing Clayoo, the software’s most efficient modeling plug-in, MatrixGold can bring the designs to life in a breeze using 3D printing. Furthermore, to help you cope up with the never-ending features and toolsets of MatrixGold, it contains tips for various stages to help you understand the software better.
It even comes with a feature called parametric history that allows you to keep track of all changes you make while creating your design. Parametric history helps designers create a non-destructive workflow while designing the jewellery pieces, marginally saving time and money.
5. RhinoJewel
RhinoJewel is an alternative to RhinoGold if you’re into designing more luxurious jewelry such as diamond rings, etc. It allows you to present your clients with photorealistic renders of your jewellery designs.
Moreover, despite being extremely feature-packed, RhinoJewel has a smooth learning curve, making it easier for beginners to grasp the fundamentals of the software.
However, RhinoJewel is targeted to a very specific class of designers specializing in jewellery designs for the luxury industry. If you’re a beginner, you may consider choosing a different and more versatile 3D modeling software for jewelry design.
6. AutoCAD
AutoCAD ranks amongst the most popular software for designing purposes. AutoCAD’s most effective and useful feature that stands out is 2D drafting. This allows designers to extract custom dimensions from drawings to copy them to other drawings, talk about drastic time-savings!
While AutoCAD is mainly utilized to create maps and interior designs of buildings, its jewellery designing capability is truly remarkable. The 3D jewellery pieces that you create with AutoCAD will have stunning quality with the option to zoom, pan, and orbit functions to assess the design more deeply.
Furthermore, you can have a cross-sectional view of your 3D design to produce a highly symmetrical piece of art. There’s a reason why AutoCAD is ranked amongst the top design software, it’s something you’ll understand by trying the software yourself.
7. 3D Design
3D Design claims to be “made by jewellers, for jewellers”, and it fairly justifies this motto. 3D Design is specifically tailored for jewellery designers. It comes with an intuitive interface that’s easy to understand even for beginner jewellery designers.
3D Design comes with a great assessment tool that lets you analyze your jewellery design before printing it. On top of that, the software has a library that holds hundreds of jewellery-related 3D renders that you can incorporate into your work. You can even scan and load a design into the software and then make a photorealistic render out of it. After all, 3D Design is known to produce one of the best lifelike qualities in its renderings (also depends on the skills of the user). This should come as no surprise since the software itself was inspired by video game graphics technology.
8. Zbrush
Zbrush is a versatile 3D software that allows modeling, texturing, and painting objects that you can use in your projects. Zbrush utilizes an advanced 3D pixel technology that reduces image pixelation dramatically. As a result, the software allows you to produce high-resolution renders of your jewellery designs. Some veteran jewellery designers even consider Zbrush as the best 3D software to work on the surface of a 3D model.
Zbrush provides you with a dedicated space that features multiple tools to satisfy all your jewellery design needs. Adjust according to the user’s requirements, the interface is so intuitive that it’s almost impossible for any jewellery designer to not recommend this software. However, Zbrush has a rather steep learning curve, it’ll require a bit of effort for beginners to understand this software.
9. Sketchup 3D
Trimble-owned SketchUp 3D comes as a decent alternative to popular jewellery design titles such as MatrixGold and RhinoGold. With Google being SketchUp’s ex-owner, the optimization of the software is truly remarkable.
Coupled with an intuitive and user-friendly interface, SketchUp is there to serve beginners and veteran jewellery designers alike. It has tons of tips, guides, and tutorials with step-by-step instructions to help you with your journey as a jewellery designer. Furthermore, the software incorporates useful plugins that can improve your jewellery designing experience even further.
The best part of all is that SketchUp 3D is free to use, which makes it the very first choice for beginner jewellery designers. Considering beginners initially don’t have the required capital to invest in a premium 3D modeling software, SketchUp is one of the most recommended software for newcomers.
From basic features like vary navigation options to advanced features that allow 3D printing, SketchUp has it all. The software even features extensions such as sandbox, the scale tool, artisan organic toolset, etc, allowing you to do more in less time.
The long list of features that SketchUp 3D boasts makes the software compete toe-to-toe with even its paid competitors.
10. TinkerCAD
TinkerCAD is a free online-based 3D modeling software that can be accessed simply using a web browser. An intuitive interface with a user-friendly touch is enough to describe the experience of TinkerCAD.
The software keeps beginners in mind and demands no prior experience of using this software. TinkerCAD is considered one of the most ideal 3D software for beginner jewelry designers, thanks to its simple UI and easy accessibility.
Packing features like parametric measurements and other alignment tools, TinkerCAD can get your basic jewellery design tasks done swiftly. However, since it’s more of a beginner-friendly 3D modeling software, it may not be of much use to you if you’re a professional jewelry designer.
The software is packed with enough features to make your ace basic jewellery designs. However, it significantly lags when it comes to creating jewellery with high detailing.
11. JewelCAD
JewelCAD is another CAD-based software that can be used to create detailed pieces of jewellery. Known for its smooth learning curve, JewelCAD provides its users with an extremely vast array of features and tools, allowing them to ace their jewellery designs ranging from beginner levels to advanced.
It has a friendly UI to let beginners effortlessly climb up the ladder of jewellery designing. Meanwhile, it equally serves veteran jewellery designers by providing them with advanced features such as curves and point editing.
It allows you to export your designs in STL format, enabling your designs to be printed using a 3D printer. Furthermore, the software even enables you to calculate the weight and number of stones needed for your jewellery piece, how cool is that?
You can even prepare your files to be suitable for CNC machining. JewelCAD is truly a one-of-a-kind software with an exceptionally intuitive interface and loads of features, suitable for beginners and professional jewellery designers alike.
12. Blender
Blender has earned quite a bit of a reputation in the industry over the past years. It’s an open-source community-driven software having all the features to justify your creativity. There is practically no limit to what you can create in Blender. Using the mesh-based direct modeling approach, grasping the fundamentals of Blender is a bit tricky for beginners.
Blender undeniably has one of the steepest learning curves amongst top 3D software. However, when you get a hold of it, Blender will become your most preferred 3D modeling software for jewellery design.
Being open-source, Blender doesn’t charge a penny from its users. Even then, there are only a few 3D modeling software that can compete with Blender. Not to mention, even most of the paid 3D modeling software that will charge you hundreds of dollars is no match for the versatility and agility of Blender.
Blender is so popular that there’s a good chance the next 3D modeling tutorial you watch online would be on Blender.
13. WizeGem
Specifically tailored for jewelry designers, WizeGem is an online-based 3D modeling software used to create or customize jewellery designs. WizeGem is particularly targeted at beginners or mediocre jewellery designers seeking a platform to amplify their skills.
Easily accessible through a web browser, WizeGem allows you to load designs of jewellery pieces and modify them but lacks the functionality to create high-quality jewellery designs from scratch.
You can either load 3D files of the hottest trending jewellery pieces into the software or you can pick separate elements from the jewelry and work with them. WizeGem is literally a gem for all the amateurs out there who want to get the feel of working on a professional project.
However, the software cannot meet the requirements and demands of a veteran jewellery designer. So, WizeGem may have advanced design options with ready-made templates, but it simply lacks the functionality to be suitable for a professional jewellery designer. However, in any case, it’s easy to recommend WizeGem to beginners.
14. 3Shaper
3Shaper is a special mention in our list since it can be used as standalone software as well as a module for 3D Design. It’s a sculpting software that lets you create 3D shapes and work on even the most minute details in those models.
Such functionality comes in handy in jewellery designing where it’s all about your craftsmanship. And putting extreme details in your designs is one way to showcase them. However, do take note that 3Shaper will only work as a module in the premium version.
If you don’t want to invest money in the software, going with the standalone version is your only choice.
3Shaper is basically 3D Design with a few changes. For example, the workspace is bigger in 3Shaper which increases the overall efficiency and decreases time. Furthermore, it has a streamlined and intuitive interface which makes newcomers feel comfortable with the software.
The learning curve of 3Shaper is moderate, anyone with a few days of practice can easily grasp the fundamentals of the software.
15. Mudbox by Autodesk
The name says it all, Autodesk Mudbox is considered one of the best 3D software jewellery designers from all over the world. Thanks to Mudbox’s powerful engine, you can create and modify 3D models in a breeze, allowing you to work on shapes, textures, paintings, etc.
The key area where Mudbox stands out from the crowd is its non-destructive workflow. It utilizes layers and masks to enable a non-destructive workflow, i.e., the changes you make won’t be permanent as you’ll freely be able to jump to any previous step.
For example, while in a destructive workflow, you can’t go back to a previous step without messing up your progress. A non-destructive workflow, on the other hand, lets you jump to any step you like and incorporate the changes in your design.
That is if you do utilize tools such as layers and masks. While this feature, especially, comes in handy for professional designers where the client can demand revisions anytime, it’s also useful for beginners as it allows them to fix errors without damaging the whole project.
Overall, Autodesk is known for its world-leading design software, Mudbox is a great addition to the company’s legacy.
Conclusion
The world of jewellery designing is ever-growing and so is the competition. Before you decide to step into the industry, choosing suitable software is the least you can do to maintain a competitive efficiency.
So, this was our take on the best 3D software for Jewellery design. Most of the 3D modeling software on our list is either completely free to use or has a free trial period. All the fifteen 3D modeling software on our list are carefully handpicked for both beginners and professional jewellery designers alike.
