Design Your Own Backpack App

5+ best design software to create bags and backpacks

Milan has been enthusiastic about PCs ever since his childhood days, and this led him to take interest in all PC-related technologies. Before joining WindowsReport, he worked as a front-end web developer. Read more

Updated: Jan 21, 2021

Posted: April 2020

A great bag design software makes your book bags, coffee bags, and leather bags to be unique, that's for sure.
The best handbag design software will make the creation process a lot easier than manual drawings like Optitex and any of these apps do.
Modo can help you render with photorealistic results. This great feature is found in plenty of other purse design software tools from our list.
The measurement capabilities of Adobe and all the other tools represent an important feature of the best backpack design software.

software to create bags

In order to design every aspect of a great-looking bag or backpack, you will need to be able to design shapes (2D panels). These panels will be the parts used to build your final 3D project for a backpack or bag.

Fortunately for you, the days in which you had to start your projects by using a pen and paper to create templates for your panels are gone.

Today, we can use specialized bag design software that allows you to edit every aspect of your design with precision and professionalism. You can also render your models faster and have automated measurements.

You can choose to use either 2D or 3D purse design software to create your project. Creating 2D panels that you can then print out and use to cut materials is a bit easier than the 3D modeling option.

In this article, we will explore some of the best bag pattern-making software options on the market that allow you to design your leather bags, book bags, and coffee bags with ease.

Be sure that they do offer a lot of other useful features to help you along the way, so read on to find out more.

What is the best design software to create bags?

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a popular raster graphics editor among professionals worldwide. As you may know, it has been used for superior design projects and realistic painting for ages.

Since it is an extremely powerful tool for drawing and painting with intuitive pens and brushes, it can clearly turn into your top fashion design software for bags.

You may crop, retouch, repair, and erase unwanted elements in a blink of an eye. Moreover, experiment and play around with color and light to make sure your bags will look better than ever.

Besides the chance to enjoy a remarkable level of customization, controlling brushes with your finger or Apple Pencil will feel like your second nature.

Amazing key features you should take into consideration:

Thousands of pencils, pens, markers, and brushes may be used with a guarantee of maintaining high quality
Precise Content-Aware Fill to if you want to fill multiple areas of an image without leaving the window
Spot Healing feature to clean up imperfections with ease
Useful Patch Tool to hide unwanted content
Enhanced Transform Warp to divide your image with a customizable grid

Adobe Photoshop

Create your backpack, purse and more, with industry-leading design software.

Adobe Illustrator

Another great bag design software is Adobe Illustrator. While Adobe Photoshop excels at designing the best bags and backpacks, Illustrator brings you the joy of unmatched 3D control over your project.

If the creation of geometric figures isn't your thing, then you'll probably enjoy creating 3D patterns in Illustrator. You may control their appearance with shading, rotation, lighting, and other properties.

Moreover, keep in mind that there's an application for mobile devices known as Adobe Illustrator Draw that you may also use.

After all, it integrates with Illustrator in an excellent way, so that's your chance to transfer your latest bag designs between the PC or Mac and your tablet/smartphone.

That, along with tons of tutorials to help you manage the capabilities of the program, makes it a great fashion design software for bags.

Some key features that you'll most likely find useful:

The workspace is not only intuitive, but you can adjust it according to your preferences
Two simple ways to create 3D objects: by revolving or extruding
Incredible Pen tool to create all kinds of designs
Useful Shape Builder tool to create and reshape objects with ease
Integration with other Adobe products you use daily

Adobe Illustrator

Create amazing pieces of purses and handbags with one of the best bag design software.

Marvelous Designer

Marvelous Designer is a great software option that was designed specifically to help its users create beautiful fashion designs, with 3D capabilities.

You can use this software to quickly and easily create bags, backpacks, blouses, t-shirts, dresses, pants, etc., no matter how complicated the models or patterns are.

This software will virtually replicate the fabrics you chose for your project and creates a 3D render so you get an idea about how the final product will look.

Marvelous Designer is compatible with most of the other 3D design software and offers a beautifully designed user interface that helps you streamline the process.

You can use this tool to immediately edit and apply different garments with different textures to a 3D shape of your choosing.

It is worth mentioning that this app has been used by the top-of-the-range game studio – EA Konami. If you saw The Hobbit, then you know what Marvelous Designer can do for you.

The customization power offered by this software is unlimited, being constrained only by your imagination.

Here are some of the best features found in Marvelous Designer:

Great processing speeds for both design and rendering
Technology-based on sewing and pattern making – creating blueprints for a garment
Can be used by people with little to no experience because of its intuitive design and user interface
Can edit textures, fabrics and physical properties either by using one of the built-in presets, or by choosing the parameters on your own (advanced users)
Can trace existing models and assign specific locations for pins
High-polygon modeling – captures the realistic movement of clothing on different shapes
Great segment and sewing tool – simple to use and fully editable

⇒ Get Marvelous Designer

Optitex by Efi

Optitex is another great purse design software option that contains all the features required in order for you to create incredible fashion designs with ease.

You can create bags and all sorts of accessories with customizable stitching, design, and other features.

You can easily create 3D virtual samples of any part of your bag design. It allows you to save money and time when starting a new project, while also allowing you to see a high-quality rendition of what you created.

This software gives you the power to maintain constant contact with all the elements found in your supply chain, making information clear for everybody involved, and reducing the production costs.

Constantly communicating with your suppliers and partners allows you to always make informed decisions, simplifying the entire process of manufacturing.

Optitex has a very encompassing library that allows you to choose from a large collection of elements – eyelets, handles, zippers, etc. This software works by combining both 2D and 3D worlds into one space.

The 2D view allows you to edit your project's elements on a plane, while the 3D view allows you to apply that element to any surface with different shapes and sizes.

The rendering of the 2D element layered on the 3D element is created through the powerful processing power found in this software.

⇒ Get Optitex by Efi

Rhino

Rhino 7 is an incredibly backpack design software. It helps you create a backpack with ease and exact measurements. With this capability, you will never encounter any issues regarding the sizes of your material panels.

This ability is powered by the newly developed double-precision meshes, allowing you to achieve great results no matter how big your project is.

In Rhino you have the ability to add, edit, and remove any annotations, change their styles, and also offer you access to history support.

This software has all the capabilities needed in order to create projects from scratch, edit them in any way imaginable, and analyze the structure of your materials.

Moreover, you can also render 3D objects, animate your project if needed, and also translates curves, surfaces, and solids.

In order to create a backpack or bag in Rhino, you will need to draw the shapes of your panels in 3D, then use the command Unroll Surface for every panel.

Doing this assures that your structure is completely flattened, so you can easily transfer the final project into a material cutting machine.

Some other useful features found in Rhino 7:

Freeform 3D modeling tools with professional-grade features
Great accuracy is both design, analysis of data, and manufacturing
Compatible with all other design, CAM, drafting, engineering, animation, and illustration software options
Can repair the structure of meshes from IGES files
The learning curve is not as big as in the case of the other software options

⇒ Get Rhino

Modo by Foundry

Modo is another incredibly useful bag design software. This tool is specifically designed to create 3D modeling, textures, and also rendering complex materials and patterns.

Modo contains great direct modeling capabilities with flexible procedural modeling, and also contains the MeshFusion Boolean toolset and other great sculpting tools.

This software was designed to be easily understandable and used by artists and designers of every level of expertise, without limiting your ability to create astounding backpacks and bags.

Here are some of its best features:

Incredibly powerful renderer with photorealistic results
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) developer tool compatible with Unity and Unreal
Flexible tool assembly system – can build your own set of tools by joining different operations
Perfectly integrates with Python and C++ APIs
Can customize the look and functionality of the user interface
Supports formats like OpenSubdiv, OpenColorIO, OpenEXR, OpenVDB and Alembic
Supports UDIM workflows while also integrating perfectly with modeling and selection workflows
Layer-based and nodal shades system – creates amazingly real-looking materials with ease
A great library of pre-made realistic materials

One of the best options found in Modo is the fact that its features can be easily extended by downloading one or more plugins from the official Modo library. Here are a few examples of some useful plugins:

V-Ray – a toolkit that allows you to control the lighting, shading, and rendering of your project
Power Translators – greatly useful tools for designers and engineers, allows you to import CAD data from other software

⇒ Get Modo by Foundry

SolidWorks

Solidworks is another great bag pattern-making software option that allows you to create backpacks and bags and offers a wide range of features.

You can use this software to design your project, simulate their use to find any possible issues, help you estimate costs of production, and checks if all manufacture instructions are correct.

SolidWorks comes in 3 versions: Standard, Professional, and Premium, each with its own features.

The Standard version of SolidWorks is a fully functional software, and allows you to perform stress tests on your project on parts only, and allows you to animate your project.

The Professional version of SolidWorks contains all the features found in the previous version, and also adds photo-realistic rendering, and offers access to eDrawings Professional.

This version also has a standard library of parts that you can use by simply dragging and dropping them in your project – buckles, pins, straps, etc.

It also allows you access to the SolidWorks Costing tool, which helps you estimate the costs of parts or of the entire project, no matter how big it is.

The Premium version of SolidWorks includes all the features found in the professional version, and also allows you access to performing static, stress, motion analysis, and the ability to analyze individual parts.

Another great tool found in the Premium version is the Tol Analyst tool, which helps you set different sizing rules for elements. It also features an easy interface with eCAD that can work for electrical designs.

Here are some of the best features found in SW:

An intuitive user interface that doesn't require a lot of time to learn
Can create relationships between features and other ports – for example connecting the width of your backpack's strap with the buckle
Great access to measuring tools no matter what pages are opened
3D markup – ability to add markups directly to parts and assemblies
Can publish your SolidWorks files to XR
Can create training videos for users on how to use your item best
Geometry & scene hierarchy
Can change all aspects of appearances of materials, but also textures/decals
Full control over lights and cameras – allows you to capture the best side of your project
Per-configuration custom properties, per-node comments, per-node, and design tables

⇒ Get SolidWorks

Because designing bags and backpacks is a difficult job as it is, you can make things a lot easier by using specialized design software.

The top 7 list we presented in this article cover both the needs of experienced designers and also people who just started in their design saga.

If you're not very experienced with using CAD software, you might want to first try out Marvelous Designer, or Optitex by Efi, or Modo applications, as handbag design software options.

Because of their specialization in this domain, it is a lot easier for you to learn all the steps of the creation process than in software that isn't.

Even if they are simpler to use than the other CAD options presented in this article, these two options offer a wide range of features that cover all your designing needs.

If you don't mind a bit of a steep learning curve, or if you already have experience using CAD software, you could jump right in and try out Rhino or SolidWorks.

If you don't know which one of these two to try out first, we would recommend going with Rhino, as it allows you a bit more freedom to create, has high-polygon modeling, and also offers great rendering capabilities.

We would love to know what software option you chose from this list and how it worked for you. Please feel free to let us know in the comment section found below.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you design a purse?
What is the best software to design clothes?
Can I be a graphic designer if I can't draw?