A Computer Aided Design (CAD) support tool for parametric design of products for Rapid Manufacture (RM)

This paper presents initial research into the functional design of a CAD support tool to be added to existing CAD software that guides and evaluates object design in relation to the requirements of manufacturing using additive manufacturing technologies, such as stereolithography, selective laser sintering, fused deposition modelling, etc. While additive manufacturing technologies have the potential to allow custom designed and uniquely produced products to the extent where product design and manufacturing is brought closer to the customer, the bottleneck to more prolific designing of custom products and consumer interaction with designs is the intelligence and simplicity of current consumer product design CAD software. The paper examines current techniques for automating or semi-automating the design of objects with the purpose of both increasing the effectiveness of a design in terms of its suitability for manufacture and of simplifying the process of designing of an object so that non-expert designers can be interactive in the design process and produce object designs that are satisfactory for manufacture. The research looks objectively at methods that will strike a balance between automatically generating populations of design solutions and therefore limiting the interaction necessary during the design process and interactively iterating and evaluating design solutions. Using parametric based modelling, methods for evolving design solutions in a seemingly random way and creating design solutions from a determined set of choices are presented in this paper.