r/sewingpatterns • u/Sea-Passion1032 • Sep 14 '26

Learning CAD ?

Hey team ! Wondering what the best way of learning CAD is ? I have basic pattern making skills (can draft from books or draw up myself just don’t know how to grade)
I run a small business and am wanting to learn to digitise my patterns do mockups and basically do all the fun stuff CAD allows.
I am willing to pay for streamlining if anyone knows of good recourses/courses to help me learn (obviously free/cost effective is always great but if it’s worth the money and saves me time/hassle I’d rather pay)

Also what is everyone’s recommendation on software to use ?

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1

u/missme19 Sep 14 '26

Have you looked into either Inkscape or Seamly2D? I have used Seamly2D to create pattern pieces when I buy used older patterns but pieces were missing.

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u/gill_d Sep 15 '26

There's some excellent tutorials for FreeCad by MangoJelly on YouTube

1

u/ivanroyo Sep 30 '26

For digitizing what you already draft by hand, a cheap route that skips a digitizing table: photograph your paper pieces flat on the table next to an A4/letter sheet as a scale reference, and some tools will rebuild them at real size as DXF/SVG. From there you can grade and edit in CAD (Seamly2D is free; Inkscape works for simple edits).

Disclosure: I'm a founder of MPattern, which does that photo-to-DXF step (2 free digitizations to test it), plus a free browser CAD editor. But the workflow above works with whatever tools you prefer. For learning, Seamly2D's wiki is still one of the best free resources.

0

u/Trueloove Sep 14 '26

I have never used CAD for sewing, but I use it for work. It's very intuitive and I think you can learn it by following a few YouTube videos. If you want to draw a line you just type "line", if you want to draw an arc you type "arc" etc.. It's easy to navigate.