4. Developments associated with additive manufacturing

4.1 Design process

In the ever-changing field of AM, it is not unusual to notice that designers feel helpless. The emergence of AM has indeed overturned a design process which was hitherto founded solely on traditional processes.

It is easy therefore to understand the importance of promoting the potential of AM among designers so that they can derive full benefit from it during the design process, in broader terms than simply as a product innovation objective. That means providing them with tools and methods suited to the particularities of AM and allowing a change in current design habits : this is the challenge of Design For Additive Manufacturing (DFAM).

The DFAM approach is currently...