LIGNA 2027: 3D animation and renders for woodworking machinery exhibitors

Dates

10 to 14 May 2027 (Monday to Friday)

Venue

Exhibition Grounds, Hanover

Organisers

Deutsche Messe AG with VDMA Woodworking Machinery

Cycle

Odd-numbered years

Changed

Moved away from Ascension Day from 2027

Nearby

interzum in Cologne the same week

Sources: LIGNA new dates announcement, Woodshop News.

LIGNA 2027 runs from Monday 10 to Friday 14 May 2027 at the Exhibition Grounds in Hanover. The organisers, Deutsche Messe and VDMA Woodworking Machinery, moved the fair away from its traditional Ascension week slot from 2027 onwards, citing changes in visitor behaviour around the public holiday and the bridge day after it. They also placed it deliberately before interzum in Cologne, so that overseas visitors can combine both trips.

For exhibitors that means a full five-day fair with a strong international audience: furniture producers, panel processors, sawmills, timber construction firms and joinery shops, many of them making investment decisions on machines that cost as much as a house. Those buyers know wood. What they cannot see on a stand is what happens inside your machine once the guarding closes.

Why woodworking machines need animation

Most woodworking processes happen at high speed, inside enclosures, and in dust. A five-axis CNC machining centre, an edge-banding line, a panel saw or a sawmill line all share the same problem on a trade fair stand: the interesting part is either invisible or too fast to follow. Animation solves three things that photography and live demos cannot:

• Slow motion with meaning. Show the glue application, the pressure zone, the trimming and scraping units of an edge bander one by one, at a speed the eye can follow.
• Material flow across a whole line. Panels moving from storage through cutting, drilling and edging to sorting, in a single continuous shot that no camera crew could film in a real plant.
• What the customer gains. Yield, offcut reduction, changeover time, batch size one: put the numbers on screen at the moment the machine achieves them.

Five visuals for a LIGNA stand

1. Line flythrough, 60 to 120 seconds

For panel processing and sawmill suppliers, the hero asset. A continuous camera path along the full line, built from layout CAD and machine models. See how we approach this in our production line animation guide.

2. Unit cutaways

Stills and short clips with the guarding removed: the aggregate head, the spindle, the hot-melt unit, the clamping system. These are the images a technical buyer takes home.

3. Feature films on one innovation

New for 2027? Give it a 20 to 45 second film of its own: a new nesting strategy, a dust extraction concept, an automated tool changer. These clips travel well on LinkedIn before and after the fair.

4. Booth wall renders

Machines rendered in the colours and finishes of your range, printed at booth scale. One prepared model gives you every colour and configuration.

5. Interactive 3D for distributors

Woodworking machinery is sold through dealers in many markets. A browser-based 3D viewer gives every dealer the same machine to show, in their language, long after Hanover.

Planning around interzum and Automate

LIGNA overlaps with interzum in Cologne and with Automate in Las Vegas the same week. If your machines serve furniture producers and you exhibit at more than one of these, brief one model in January and plan re-cuts per audience: furniture production benefits for interzum visitors, machine engineering for LIGNA, automation and robotics angles for the US.

Timeline for LIGNA 2027

Budget

Machine renders start at $890, a five-view machine set at $2,400, feature films at $3,200, and process or line films at $6,500 for 60 seconds. Longer line films of 90 to 120 seconds are $10,500. CAD preparation is included in all of these, which matters on woodworking lines where an assembly can run to tens of thousands of parts. Read what industrial 3D animation costs for market comparisons.

What to send

• Machine or line CAD as STEP or native files. Layout drawings are enough for the parts of a line we only see from a distance.
• A process description: material, feed rate, unit sequence and the results you want to show.
• Your stand plan with screen sizes and any print specifications.

We sign an NDA before any file moves, and your CAD stays yours. Send one file for a free assessment and a fixed quote within one working day.

Written by Engr. Bilal Naseem, mechanical engineer (PEC Reg. No. 47883) and founder of 3DEnginuity. Questions about your own machine? Write to bilal.naseem@3denginuity.com.