The acronym DfAM – Design for Additive Manufacturing – has emerged in recent months to define all those practices and skills that enable a designer or an engineer to create objects which optimally leverage the geometric potential of additive manufacturing technologies.
These skills and practices include many software tools – often included in CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) programs as well as capabilities that are derived from personal experience. Next generation CAD and CAE software may provide support through a wide range of approaches. These include processes such as topology optimization – that is the ability to add material where it is needed and remove it where it is unnecessary – or the parametric generation of lattice and trabecular structures. There are highly intricate networks of structures that can confer a specific component the same or better mechanical properties than solid parts, using less material and thus reducing manufacturing costs. Furthermore, these types of structures can be produced only through layered additive manufacturing processes.
While these approaches are becoming adopted in advanced engineering, there were still largely unknown until just a few years ago, when only a handful of forward-looking creatives, artists and product designers began to experiment with them in combination with AM technologies. Today DfAM has grown to encompass concepts such as mass customization – the ability to serially manufacture custom products – as well as wearable technology and even personalized food manufacturing. These designers continue to show us the way products will be digitally and additively made in the future.
Generative design uses cloud computing and artificial intelligence to accelerate design exploration beyond what’s humanly possible. That’s why Autodesk is now working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to offer even more compute power to the first 1,000 new Fusion 360 subscribers who want to get started with generative design. The …
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To fully reap the benefits of additive manufacturing technologies for part production, it is often necessary to go back to the drawing board to reengineer the part in question and optimize its structure for AM. Fortunately, with state-of-the-art software programs such as ParaMatters’ CogniCAD, redesigning a part for AM doesn’t …
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ParaMatters, one of the newest players in design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) software, might also be one of the most exciting. Founded by Michael Bogomolny, the two-year-old company promises to revolutionize design-to-manufacturing processes with its advanced design and topology optimization software. This past January, ParaMatters officially introduced CogniCAD, a cloud-based, …
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John Briscella is a former Autodesk Pier 9 resident designer (like Anouk Wipprecht and other 3D printing celebs) who has been experimenting with some advanced generative design capabilities for a growing range of consumer products. He has since launched Aminimal, his and his design partner’s Lana Blum’s online shop for …
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Wohlers Associates is partnering with the Québec Industrial Research Centre (CRIQ) to offer, for the first time in Canada, three days of intensive training on design for additive manufacturing (DfAM). The course is targeted at designers, engineers, and managers wanting to learn how to design parts that fully benefit from additive …
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nTopology Element is the first piece of CAD software to offer full importing and exporting of 3MF’s Beam Lattice extension, which was developed and ratified with nTopology’s direct involvement. STLs have significant disadvantages for representing lattice structures. Not only do they produce large file sizes, but they also result in …
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Reuters, one the leading news agencies in the world, is reporting that General Motors is working with Autodesk to manufacture new, lightweight 3D printed parts that could help the automaker meet its goals to add alternative-fuel vehicles to its product lineup. Surprisingly the issue of vehicle light-weighting practices through AM and their …
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While 3D printing has now been around for over thirty years, and some 3D printing designers have been exploring the technology since then, until recently, there was no clear-cut approach to fully exploiting the technology’s potential for near-limitless geometries. The recent rise in the adoption of the acronym DfAM (Design …
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Software, tech and industrial giant Siemens has been making very significant investments – and closing very important partnerships – in the world of Additive Manufacturing, a family of technologies that the company views as absolutely strategic for the future. While these moves have directly involved all major AM technologies, after …
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Siemens invited a number of global influencers and journalists to its AM Influencer Tour at Hannover Messe. The company is making giant moves in AM focusing on all relevant aspects of the end-to-end digital manufacturing process. Zvi Feuer, SVP Manufacturing Engineering Software, Siemens PLM Software, kicks-off the Hannover Messe tour with …
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