Evaluation of design support tools for additive manufacturing and conceptualisation of an integrated knowledge management framework

Abstract

Over time, additive manufacturing (AM) has gained more and more adoption into series production. Software tools are developed to assist designers to incorporate specific design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) guidelines into their product development processes. In this paper, an overview of already existing DfAM functionality is given by a review of scientific publications and commercial software products. Additionally, interviews with members of development teams which design AM parts are carried out to assess specific workflows and problems in the current design process. In both investigations, the lack of an integrated and automated software solution emerged. Based on these results, a structure for an integrated design support toolchain is proposed.