Introduction to Furniture Design
Thanks to various software, Furniture Designs for chairs, sofas, tables, beds, desks, cupboards, shelves, and many others have become an inseparable part of our daily lives and our understanding of what comfort is, I’m not sure anyone can imagine life without them. As evidence of this fact, we’ve incorporated them in almost every major facility we’ve invented and used over the years such as airplanes, vehicles, caravans, hotels, offices, etc.
Furniture are objects designed and intended to support various human activities such as seating, eating, reading, sleeping, carrying loads, storing things and may serve as an aesthetic complement to the room they’re in.
In recent times, the value of furniture for beautification has become paramount and has influenced how we distinguish class among the wealthy elite. Just take a look at the furniture at the Buckingham Palace, nothing screams class like that.
According to Archaeological research, furniture has existed for almost 30,000 years, as people across time have been constructing, carving, reusing and furnishing woods, stone, and animal bones to form furniture for their use and comfort. Evidence of this can be seen with the Venus figurine in Russia, Skara Brae in Scotland, and the remains of the Joinery construct of early ancient Egypt.
Probably another representation of early made furniture would be those we improvise in parks and in the country, where we may use or may have seen tree stump, rock or moss, being improvised as furniture, some have been calved to look like real furniture too.
Reading through this article will help you build an appreciation for the process of furniture conceptualization and it’ll also help you understand the ease and efficiency Furniture Design Software like SolidFace provide in the making of these beautiful pieces that we can’t live without.
The Furniture Design Industry
The furniture industry includes all the processes involved in conceptualization, design, production, distribution, and selling of office, home, school, business, and other types of furniture.
Furniture is made using a large variety of materials, we primarily use wood but metals, plastic, rattan, fabrics, and even precious jewels can still be used. Still, wood is very much preferred among practitioners and since its fairly cheaper, readily available and very traditional, it might explain why sometimes people regard furniture-making as woodworking.
Traditional vs Modern Furniture
Vintage or Traditional Furniture are furniture products that were built in the 20th century with a classy style that may be considered old-fashioned by most people but have great appeal for consumers with a taste for the classics. This furniture was built for huge spaces or room and to be combined with other assorted Jewels and paintings. It features a custom made structure produced specifically for its users, and are complemented with dynamic patterns and ornamented with precious jewels, they were made for the nobility or anyone who could afford it.
Modern Styled Furniture, on the other hand, are built with a different concept in mind. They’re are made to be elegant, straight-lined, even curved, smooth, and with neatly polished surfaces. The emphasis is more on simple geometric forms than on heavy ornamentation. The goal is to create an uncompromising elegant looking piece, that’s free of messy lines, wrong color combinations, uneven proportions and they’re made in commercial quantities. Modern designs employs the use of CAD software for design and modelling.
Trends in Modern Furniture Making
The ideas of modern furniture have led to several trends in the industries that shape the scope practitioners use in viewing their work. It’s worth noting that these philosophies listed here were partially referenced from Forbes and you can check it out later. These trends are:
Technological-Driven Furniture Design
Designer now want their designs to harmonize with digital technology, to serve the online market. Practitioners want to use the tools that digital technology provides to better their output and sales. This is the mainstay of this article and it we’ll extensively explore it throughout this piece. We’ll see how design software like SolidFace can help us bring concepts into reality with the least minimum effort required.
Globally-Inspired Furniture
With globalization and the ease in traveling, it’s now a common trend to export design ideas and products across the world. Everything in the world now can be an inspiration for a piece, furniture designs are now made to non-traditional styles and structures, you just need to know where to look to get ideas, which according to most designers we’ve talked to, happens to be everywhere.
Smaller Dimensions and Profiled Furniture
Modern furniture’s are more streamlined to efficiently use the smaller space available in modern buildings. Furniture are more direct and precise in their delivery of aesthetics and functionality without adding any redundant part to its make, they maintain an attitude of simplicity.
Furniture going Green
The rise in the issue of environmental degradation and global warming has necessitated the use of environmentally friendly materials and production methods among practitioners of the industry. This is also the reason why there is a more responsible attitude to wood as the primary source of furniture materials and emphasis has been placed on recycling woods and using other available materials as full or partial replacement of timber.
Multi-functional Furniture
Remember what we said about modern houses being built with smaller rooms? Well, modern furniture are now constructed to have several additional functions to its basic function to reduce the need for more furniture, providing more space for the living area available for its owners, smart right?
Examples of Great Vintage Furniture
Some examples of the great classical furniture include the likes of 1955 PK52 classroom desk, designed by a design professor Poul Kjaerholm. It was used in the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. The very popular and iconic 1950 CH22 lounge chairs that were designed by Hans J. Wegner for Carl Hansen and Son enterprise. This great furniture enlightened and created a market for highly detailed and exquisite furniture trends that we have today.
Examples of Genius Modern Furniture Designs
Now with modern software like SolidFace, furniture designers and makers can make beautifully designed furniture with high-end accuracy in proportions and dimensions that weren’t very common in the past, all with great ease and minimum effort.
Examples of this modern designed furniture will include Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe’s Barcelona Chair, Eero Aarnio’s Ball Chair, and the Chinese designed Hidden Dragon sofa.
Another great plus to using modern Software like SolidFace in the design of high-end furniture is that it broadens the possibility of the design since there is no obstruction to the method, concepts, and ideas of the designer, it’s the true meaning of ‘all things are possible’ as seen from the recent examples of modern furniture, there is simply no limit to the possibility of designs with a CAD software.
Modern Design Philosophy
Design Philosophy is the principles and rules that guide modern designers in making a relevant piece. Though not stated here, but following the industrial trend is also a design philosophy that designers follow, some important design philosophies are:
Functionality
In an age like ours when many products do make life easier, consumers don’t settle for less anymore. The main basis for their decision to buy your piece is how much solace there can get from the products, the piece must fulfil every promise you made.
This philosophy is very paramount and most modern designers are making sure to maintain it by building high-quality and functional masterpieces.
Detail Oriented
There is an emphasis on the delicately designed curves, lines, and bodywork of furniture. To improve the aesthetic value of furniture, designers and woodworkers now use modern software and tools to produces excellent and elegant fitments that consumers can appreciate.
New Materials
Modern furniture is made by forward-thinking designers that boldly play around and experiment with new ideas and materials that can improve the overall value of their furniture product and if successful, there are integrated. modern materials like plastic, plywood, glass, lucite, and fiberglass have seen recent entrance into the furniture world, innovating what we now call furniture making.
Fabulous Looks
It’s well known among designers that there are three response consumer can give for a piece of design and there are Yes, No, or a Wow! Personally, SolidFace brings you the wow effect. Because the goal of modern furniture is to make their customers always respond with a loud “wow” anytime they see their work.
Simplicity
It’s quite a common knowledge among designers that great designs most times require less design input. Good designers use as little as possible to show what it can achieve with what it’s got.
CAD designers understand that simplicity is not just the absence of clutters, but that it’s explaining the purpose and place of every component in the furniture assembly.
Deconstructivism
I know, that this is probably the most controversial of the philosophies, according to the celebrated designer Franklyn Gehry “Life is chaotic, Designs should reflect this”.
This is a far cry from the last points, but it goes to show how modern designs fall on both extremes both to complement and objecting each other and this we think is its appeal, cos it’s balanced.
The Best CAD Software for Design
With this background knowledge of what informs the decision and taste of modern furniture designers, you can better appreciate the unique position of SolidFace software in Modern Furniture designs.
Among all the other numerous design software out there, SolidFace is a leader in meeting the entire needs and unique tastes of furniture designers. As you will soon see, SolidFace provides several unique opportunities and features that allow users to achieve these wanton philosophies and industrial trends of furniture making with little to no effort at all.
Features of SolidFace

Here are some great features that make SolidFace a very compatible software for furniture designs.
Material Assignment
SolidFace provides its users with the opportunity to assign unique materials into your virtual design models, making it easier to visualize and check for its durability and ability to withstand the relevant test. These materials are available in SolidFace’s material library and are done to combine physical or mechanical properties.
Real-Time Collaborative 3D Design Cloud Software
The real-time collaborative cloud enables users and designers in different places, using different CAD software to collaborate simultaneously at the same time.
The best way to understand this feature is to see your SolidFace as a bridge software that interconnects different computer-aided design software’s from all over the world at the same moment, this is simply amazing, just imagine the possibility of what you can achieve with this amazing tool as you create your design community for your very important project.
Create a Bill of Materials
Just as the name implies, the Bill of Materials is a bill that lists the sub-assemblies, sub-components, intermediate assemblies, raw materials, and their quantities for each category that’s required to make the final product in a parent-child method or top-down method.
The bill also known as BOM is used as a communication tool between product designers or initiators with their manufacturing crew or workmen and is usually included in their production order.
It’s also used to accurately value the final product since it contains all constituent elements of the model, the cost, so the sales value can accurately be derived with the bill of materials, this is why it’s an important feature for any good design software.
Eliminates Collisions and Interferences
Most of us CAD designers may have come across collision-related issues during our work as it occurs when components in motion are obstructed. SolidFace software can detect collision issues present in the entire assembly or a select group of components in the furniture assembly.
Now, Interference is also a very common issue for complex furniture design and they include bodies that share coincident faces, bodies with overlapping volume, etc. SolidFace is built with an internal tool to check for any type of interference.
SolidFace has some tools like Physical dynamics and interference detector that can help discover and eliminate these issues without any difficulty at all.
3D Renderings
Rendering can be in 2D and 3D. But the best way to see it will be to take rendering as a realistic or non-realistic image of your designed prototype. Rendering aims to give users and designers a feel of their work by providing accurate geometry, different angles of view, the appearance of the materials, precise lighting, shading, and shadowing.
Advanced Creation of Solid and Surface Geometry
SolidFace helps in the creation of solid and surface geometry which are the main structural forms of furniture. Solid geometry is the process of creating three-dimensional Euclidean space like cubes, prisms, spheres, and cuboids while the surface is the geometry of flat shapes like triangles, circles, and parallelograms.
Now, with SolidFace your work is easier as you can choose from the option on basic shapes, you can combine these shapes with ease to create complex assemblies.
The software enables the dimensioning of components. With the Ortho mode, you can create perfectly straight lines and duplicate components with great ease, after using this software we doubt you would want to draw with your hands or any other software anymore.
Why SolidFace is Perfect for You

SolidFace comes with several features that we can’t completely discuss but we can highlight quite a few here:
- SolidFace provides you the opportunity to communicate with other CAD users notwithstanding their software of choice. It provides the DWG, BMP, X_T, X_B, DXF, STL, etc. in its standard versions.
- Creation of complex geometries that are useful for creating intricate furniture.
- 3D printing compatibility.
- 3D history construction tree as well as direct command editing.
- Parametric and automated geometric associative construction references such as the origin of the arcs, the arc middle, midpoint, arcs, endpoint, etc.
- Exploded view.
- Clash and collision test.
- Communication with other Windows and office applications through the clipboard.
- Associative dimensioning that is fully adapted to many standards.
- Geometric operations and editing by direct selection of entities or features of the tree.
- 3D construction features such as Extrude, Revolve, Loft, Sweep, etc.
- 3D parts development families use the CSV (Excel Files Association) or TXT table files format.
- Customizable toolbars.
- Possibility of managing multitasking several projects simultaneously.
- Graphics screen can be divided up to 16 view windows, allowing the visualization and working of several project details at the same time.
- Adjustable Print Preview.
- PDF and other advanced file saving extension printing compatibility.
- Local and global variables.
- Clear definition of parametric variables via commands, questions, or variable tables.
- Logical conditions If-then-else assistance.
- Parametric generation of bill of materials with collaborative links with Excel and Access.
These numerous features make SolidFace the best software to use in the conceptualization and design of furniture and other creative engineering works, this is the trade secret of many excellent designers out there.
Why Use CAD Software for Furniture Design
We have no issue with the traditional designer who’d prefer to do their conceptualization and designing with pencils and paper, or other archaic software even in this digitalized society. But notwithstanding we would just briefly highlight what you’re missing here.
Saves Time
From the aforementioned text, we have gone through the features of your SolidFace software. Tools that make using your software faster than drawing over several papers that will take you many days and you trashing many error-filled ones, just too stressful and messy.
Eliminates Production Errors with Ease
With just a click of your mouse, you’d discover errors that you couldn’t have seen with a third eye. If you’re a traditional designer you’ll know that such errors can’t be easily discovered by you but by a supervisor or even the workmen in the workshop, when your piece doesn’t fit. CAD softwares goes a long way to improve the efficiency of your design process.
Build your Clientele
This is by far the greatest reason to stop using your already-stressed fingers and start using SolidFace. By doing your work with a CAD design software like SolidFace, you’ll be able to render your furniture in 3D, your clients from all over the world can appreciate and make adequate adjustments to your designs even before its finished, instant quotes and pay all without ever being to your workshop.
You want more clients? Then use a CAD software. Use SolidFace.
Likely Furniture Design Objections from Traditional Based Designers
Just like having faith, they’re those that could be best described as non-believers, who for so many reasons are always the last ones to adapt to industry trends and innovations. Now, most traditional designers will claim that designing by hand is more hands-on, faster in that there is no need to scroll or select options for features, and so it’s more creative.
Our response to this is that most of their claims are true, to a point of course. The quality of your hand-made design will depend on your skill as an artist which a lot of people don’t have and if you want to hire an artist to do this for you well that just adds to the cost.
So, making a hand-made design for your design is great, but it places more emphasis on your drawings rather than your actual creativity.
As a follow up to the last point, using CAD software allows you to draw without any skill or talent in the fine art of creating images from pencil on paper. With this software, there is no need to be an adept or enthusiast in drawing or painting or any visual arts whatsoever.
All you need is to learn the tools and understand what each feature does and you are well on your way to become a furniture designer.
And if you think the hands-on feature of your hand-made designs makes it faster, that is only half true. Hand-made drawings are only fast for just basic drawings that only communicate the idea and not for more detailed ones that need to have dimensions, labels, and other symbols only professional know.
Final Thoughts on Furniture Design
Now, if you’re wondering ‘What kind of furniture can be designed using SolidFace?’, you should instead wonder, ‘What furniture design can SolidFace not accomplish?’ our answer remains, Nothing! Because from household furniture to office or vehicular furniture, SolidFace has got you covered.
We’re sure that you can agree with us from the features and philosophy of SolidFace as a design software that this software is the one-stop-shop for anything furniture designs and analysis. The best part of this amazing software is that it provides excellent engineering and architectural output, that’s unbeatable by any of its rivals.
If you’re new to learning how to use SolidFace for furniture designs, check out our article on how to draw a chair to get you started. It’s really easy and trust me you’ll love it.