Does designing for additive manufacturing help us be more creative? an exploration in engineering design education

Swapnil Sinha, Hong En Chen, Nicholas A. Meisel, Scarlett R. Miller

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

31 Scopus citations

Abstract

Designing for manufacturing encourages designers to tailor products for manufacturing constraints, assembly requirements, and limited resources. The additive manufacturing (AM) process challenges traditional manufacturing constraints by building material layer-by-layer, providing opportunities for increased complexity, mass customization, multifunctional embedding, and multi-material production, which were previously difficult with traditional manufacturing (TM) processes. With its application as an effective prototyping and manufacturing tool, AM is prevailing in the educational and industrial engineering design process. For proper utilization of the potential it offers, AM has created a need for an effective Designing for AM (DfAM) curriculum. This exploratory study examines how current formal education on DfAM considerations influence creative concept generation as compared to designing for TM (DfTM). A design study was conducted in two different classrooms, one with and one without formal training in DfAM. It was found that the ideas generated for AM on average were significantly more elegant than the ideas generated for TM. On the other hand, ideas generated for TM scored higher than AM in feasibility. These results indicate that AM significantly AIDS in generating aesthetically appealing ideas, but not necessarily in the generation of feasible ideas, compared to TM. We use these findings to provide recommendations for design education.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication19th International Conference on Advanced Vehicle Technologies; 14th International Conference on Design Education; 10th Frontiers in Biomedical Devices
PublisherAmerican Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
ISBN (Electronic)9780791858158
DOIs
StatePublished - 2017
EventASME 2017 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC/CIE 2017 - Cleveland, United States
Duration: Aug 6 2017Aug 9 2017

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference
Volume3

Other

OtherASME 2017 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC/CIE 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityCleveland
Period8/6/178/9/17

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Modeling and Simulation

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