Gallery | Download | Sales | Support | Search

Fast fit

Hikers have always clamored for shoes that fit better. To meet this demand with a revolutionary fit, Montrail’s design team developed the IntegraFit™ concept. Because of the accuracy needed, a completely new design and manufacturing process was required. With only one month until a big sporting goods trade show in Atlanta, the challenge seemed overwhelming.

Accuracy and freedom

Central to the IntegraFit system were highly accurate custom lasts. (A last is a form shaped like a human foot.) The measurements for these lasts came from digitally scanning over a million feet. The traditional method of shoe design and manufacturing did not allow the precision needed to deliver the IntegraFit concept.

Montrail needed a tool that could fit the shoe design accurately to the last and provide creative freedom to the design team.

Since I had experience with Rhinoceros, I felt it could deliver the accuracy and freedom Montrail’s design team needed. I suggested that they base the new process on Rhino.

In less time

Not only was the traditional design and manufacturing process inaccurate, it took many revisions and prototypes to complete a design. We did not have the time to create many prototypes—we had to get it right the first time to hit our show deadline.

What we needed was a way to prototype the shoe on the computer and communicate that complete model to the manufacturers.

We came to rely on Rhino’s ability to communicate its model in many different ways. We imported scanned data from the last and designers' drawings. We also used files exported from Rhino for prototyping and manufacturing and to create graphics for product literature.

Starting with great information

To get started, we needed to represent the physical last in the computer so that we could model the shoe around it. To do this we used the MicroScribe 3-D digitizing arm and Rhino.