You know it as the serviceable software with which engineers design functional parts. Engineers can produce a number of cleverly shaped parts with their computer-aided design systems. Many of those shapes appear in pleasing colors. And they can be rotated right on the screen. But let's be honest: A part ain't art.

Pozzi Franzetti of Taos, N.M., works with much the same CAD and computer-aided manufacturing programs beloved by engineers, architects, textile designers, and manufacturers across the globe, but she uses them to a different end. As a metalwork artist, Franzetti essentially sculpts with metal. Only instead of sculpting tools, she uses graphics and CAD software as well as freehand drawings, and metal-cutting and metal-rolling machines to create her signature pieces.

Artist Franzetti's pieces have a Southwest flair, drawn from American Indian lore and ranch life.

Many of her pieces have a Southwestern flair and much of her work is functional, like light switch covers and yard gates, she said. Franzetti even makes whimsical earthquake detectors (small metal sculptures perched atop a spring that starts to quake along with the earth). Franzetti relies on the computer numerically controlled software to guide her plasma cutter to slice metal in accordance with her complicated designs. But that CNC machine isn't used to taking orders from an artist. So she has come up with a freehand drawing workaround that includes CAD technology.

To begin a sculpture, Franzetti draws either on paper or in graphic arts software. A few months ago, for instance, she was at work on a 20-foot-long, 6-foot-tall gate that will open onto the yard of an opera singer who commissioned the work. The piece includes an image of the moon as well as musical notes cascading across its length. It is inscribed in Portuguese with a line from an opera that the singer performs.

Franzetti first sketched out her concept for the gate in her AutoCAD program, then perfected it in a graphic arts program. Problem is, the CNC-programmed metal cutter doesn't read graphics software. But Franzetti has a solution.

To get the sketch into the CAD software she traces over the image with a pressure-sensitive, wireless pen. Franzetti said she can't design directly in her AutoCAD system because it requires her to manipulate straight lines into curved lines. She can't get the results she wants.

"I'm drawing freehand, but architects use a straight line," she said. "I've got to create it in a freehand way, then take the pen and dot over it and then I've got a pattern my machine will understand."

She converts the CAD file to a CNC file. "Then I send it to the plasma cutter and, presto-chango, it's cutting these things out.

"I'll make 1,000 pieces from one design," she added. "They need to be accurate so I don't want to go and blindly cut these things out."

Franzetti uses CAD as a bridge between her freehand drawings and her metal-cutting machine.

She works on her drawings at home, then sends the files to her studio. When she arrives, the plasma cutter is ready to go. Franzetti said she works with both systems—freehand drawing and CAD design—so she can take advantage of the math behind curve generation and the creativity of freehand drawing.

"You can make all these fabulous, abstract shapes," she said. "I'll cut a shape out and then roll it on my roller, and I'll weld them across a sheet of steel or fasten them. I couldn't do that stuff without CAD."

Franzetti sometimes designs individual components that, when cut, can be fitted together in a three-dimensional shape. She'll create pieces with creatively placed bends in the metal.
Sound intriguing? Test it yourself. Engineers who want to take their software and hardware in a different direction can take a welding lesson, which Franzetti offers. Students get to use all her equipment, including the cutting machine, her forge, her 40-ton press, and drill press.

She picked up metalworking in high school and never looked back.

"I have an awesome monster garage and I just have fun in there," she said.

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