Movement-aware layouts
Design around diameters, centre holes, date windows, open-heart apertures, sub-dials, chapter rings and marker spacing — not a blank canvas.
Free offline watch dial design software
Watch dial design software for makers and modders.
Dial Studio is a focused tool for designing real watch dials — not a general illustration or CAD program bent into the job. Lay out guilloché around a real movement, place markers, numerals, apertures and text, preview the engraved metal, and export files you can hand to your laser, CNC, water jet or vendor.
Works offline. No account. Free in Phase A.
What it does
Everything a watch dial needs, in one focused workspace.
Guilloché engines
Rose-engine, straight-line, rosette, barleycorn, Clous de Paris, waves, ripples, basketweave and spirograph-style fields.
Apertures & furniture
Reserve space for complications and knockouts; add markers, batons, numerals, minute tracks, text and logos.
Realistic relief preview
See engraved-metal depth, light and shadow — brass, steel, titanium and colour/oxide-inspired looks — before you export.
Fabrication-ready export
SVG, DXF, STEP, STL, PNG and sidecar files with the geometry and context your next tool or vendor needs.
Offline & private
Designs stay local on your device. No account, no cloud sync, no login gate in Phase A — and a native iPhone/iPad app.
Where Dial Studio fits
You can absolutely draw a dial in a vector editor or model one in CAD — but you spend most of your time rebuilding watch-specific knowledge those tools do not have: guilloché engines, movement openings, chapter-ring geometry, and export layers a fabricator can actually use. Dial Studio starts with that knowledge built in, so you move from idea to handoff faster and with fewer surprises.
- vs. Illustrator / Inkscape / Figma — Dial Studio generates true guilloché and lays it out around real movement constraints, instead of hand-drawn ornament.
- vs. general CAD/CAM — start from dial-native geometry and finish with the same STEP/STL/DXF handoff, without modelling every marker and aperture from scratch.
- vs. generic pattern generators — patterns are shaped for a dial (centre hole, date, sub-dials, legibility), and preview as engraved metal.
Popular with Seiko/NH, Miyota and VK modders, small-workshop makers and microbrand concept leads who need credible dial artwork and a clean vendor brief.
Export formats
- SVG — vector artwork for laser software, print checks and further editing.
- DXF — laser, CNC, water jet and CAD/CAM 2D handoff.
- STEP / STL — CAD/CAM review and rosette/cam geometry.
- PNG / relief PNG — shareable previews and shaded relief references.
- Sidecar / JSON — repeatable design settings and context.
Explore the guilloché pattern generator, the pattern gallery, or specific patterns such as barleycorn and Clous de Paris.
Honest by design: Dial Studio is software and file handoff only. It does not fabricate, order or guarantee finished dials. Its exports are fabrication-oriented — measure, test, verify, then cut.