Designing and making luxury handbags with AutoCAD LT

[The AutoCAD Blog]

For more than 30 years, Wendy Stevens has built an illustrious career designing and making metal handbags by hand. These stunning, luxury bags have even graced the pages of Vogue.

During the better part of her career, Stevens crafted everything by hand—from the metal templates to the actual construction of each unique design. But a devastating fire ripped through her workshop and wiped out years of work. She had to start from scratch.

With this reset, Stevens decided to take a digital route. She enrolled in an online training course to learn AutoCAD LT and hasn’t looked back. Within a year, she went from destroyed templates to completely digitized resources—and an entirely new approach to her business.

Wendy Stevens’ workshop. Courtesy of Wendy Stevens. Wendy Stevens’ butterfly handbag design in AutoCAD LT. Courtesy of Wendy Stevens.

Stevens continues to form every bag by hand with the help of a press brake, a series of slip rolls, a hand brake, and an assortment of small hand tools. But AutoCAD LT freed her to explore new design opportunities she simply couldn’t do before. Today she has more than 170 handbag designs created using AutoCAD LT.

“It’s amazing how much detail you can get with AutoCAD LT,” Stevens says. “I have a template for all the layers that go into each drawing. It’s like a rhythm that I’ve established. I can’t imagine how I could design and make my bags without it.”

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Check out the full story and discover more about Wendy Steven’s design process.

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