The draft, a grid of black and white squares used to specify where a particular warp crosses over or under a weft in woven cloth, is a common representation used to design and describe woven structures. The squares in a draft directly, or with a few modifications, translate to manufacturing instructions, which makes the draft a common representation used in weaving design software.
In this paper, we describe how using a different woven structure representation, a cross-section, in a design tool foregrounds different concerns. Specifically, we describe and reflect on our motivation, design, and initial testing of an interactive cross-section design tool in AdaCAD and share how it helped us appreciate how a cross-section representation gives “voice” to the material conditions of weaving at design time — color interaction, layer structure, and loom constraints — that the draft tends to obscure.
We share our experiences to provide inspiration for future design tools, and, to help those interested in documentation and sharing of their designs consider how representations shape attention to different facets of the weaving process.
