Design tools for metal additive manufacturing: a critical and perspective overview

Metal Additive Manufacturing is quite expensive and very different from traditional schemes. The possibility of realizing lightweight products with free-form shapes increases the interest in this technology in the industry. The main limitations of the widespread of Metal Additive Manufacturing concern the high cost of materials and 3D printers, and the necessity of post-processing activities. Additive Manufacturing generally claims different design constraints if compared to traditional manufacturing technologies. The improvements in 3D Metal Printing are increasing the design practices in Additive Manufacturing. The design workflow for Additive Manufacturing includes different tools and methods to manage the design complexity. These tools are CAD/CAE software, numerical simulations, database, etc. They mostly are the updated versions of already existing tools. Therefore, these tools are not directly developed to support the phases of Additive Manufacturing. The paper analyzes the main functionalities of Design for Metal Additive Manufacturing tools. The critical analysis suggests the necessity to improve the interactive practices between users and tools along the design workflow. A more interactive approach to design could reduce the gap between the definition of the part geometry and the parameter settings for the additive process.