High Tech tools and Old School craft

I recently took the plunge and invested a considerable amount of both money and time to incorporate computer aided design (CAD) into Given Gold Jewelers. I had forgotten how exciting learning a new craft can be! I am spending way too much time and learning too slowly for my tastes, but I just cannot get enough.. I have designed several virtual pieces of jewelry on my computer, and we are in the process of manufacturing these new creations as we speak. The cool thing about CAD, is that a solid foundation in jewelry design and manufacture is essential to desgning a piece that will be practical, yet it allows the precision to keep precise symmetry which would be impossible to achieve by hand. Once I complete a design, it is sent to a milling machine, and may be milled in one, or several pieces to be hand assembled once the wax is cast.
I am in love with the fact that I can imagine things now that were once virtually impossible to make by hand, yet the personal skilled hand work is still necessary to bring a design to reality. We are able to speed up the approval process, with much more confidence by offering a computer generated rendering of the design before any wax has been carved. This leaves less room for misinterpretation, and facilitates changes much more efficiently.
I am posting a couple of designs here as renderings, and as they are completed in gold and platinum, I will post the final piece as well. It will give you an idea of what is possible, and convey the excitement that both we and our clients feel as we go through each phase of a project.