Design Heuristics for Addititive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (AM) has revolutionized manufacturing capabilities and created new design freedoms. Its special capabilities are enabling shape, material, functional, and hierarchical freedom, when compared to traditional manufacturing. Unfortunately, due to its newness, constantly advancing capabilities, and stark differences to the traditional manufacturing paradigm, designers struggle to design artifacts that take advantage of its unique capabilities. To address this need for novice and expert designers, we have developed 25 process and material independent Design Heuristics for Additive Manufacturing (DHAM) to assist designers in the early-phases of the design process to help them explore the special capabilities enabled by AM. These heuristics are based on the analysis of 275 AM artifacts drawn from academia, industry, online repositories, and the media, and they have been validated through various user studies with novice and expert designers.

Heuristic Cards have been developed as a delivery format, and are available for download below. In addition, a related AM object has been designed to accompany each heuristic and card.

Files to download

Download Design Heuristics for Additive Manufacturing Cards (PDF, 8.3 MB) (ETH)

Download the Design Heuristics for AM Objects from external page Thingiverse (ETH)