Textile IR: A Bidirectional Intermediate Representation for Physics-Aware Fashion CAD

TL;DR

Textile IR is a comprehensive, formal intermediate representation that integrates CAD, physics simulation, and lifecycle assessment, enabling bidirectional feedback and uncertainty management for more sustainable and manufacturable fashion design.

Contribution

It introduces Textile IR, a novel formal framework that unifies fashion design, physics simulation, and sustainability assessment through a structured, constraint-based scene graph architecture.

Findings

Enables real-time updates of sustainability metrics based on material substitutions.

Facilitates bidirectional feedback between pattern design and physics simulation.

Addresses compound uncertainty in fashion engineering workflows.

Abstract

We introduce Textile IR, a bidirectional intermediate representation that connects manufacturing-valid CAD, physics-based simulation, and lifecycle assessment for fashion design. Unlike existing siloed tools where pattern software guarantees sewable outputs but understands nothing about drape, and physics simulation predicts behaviour but cannot automatically fix patterns, Textile IR provides the semantic glue for integration through a seven-layer Verification Ladder -- from cheap syntactic checks (pattern closure, seam compatibility) to expensive physics validation (drape simulation, stress analysis). The architecture enables bidirectional feedback: simulation failures suggest pattern modifications; material substitutions update sustainability estimates in real time; uncertainty propagates across the pipeline with explicit confidence bounds. We formalise fashion engineering as constraint satisfaction over three domains and demonstrate how Textile IR's scene-graph representation enables AI systems to manipulate garments as structured programs rather than pixel arrays. The framework addresses the compound uncertainty problem: when measurement errors in material testing, simulation approximations, and LCA database gaps combine, sustainability claims become unreliable without explicit uncertainty tracking. We propose six research priorities and discuss deployment considerations for fashion SMEs where integrated workflows reduce specialised engineering requirements. Key contribution: a formal representation that makes engineering constraints perceptible, manipulable, and immediately consequential -- enabling designers to navigate sustainability, manufacturability, and aesthetic tradeoffs simultaneously rather than discovering conflicts after costly physical prototyping.