Exploring the Manifestation of Design for Manufacturing Heuristics in Students' Early-Stage Engineering Design Concepts

Abstract Additive manufacturing (AM) can produce designs in a manner that greatly differs from the methods used in the older, more familiar technologies of traditional manufacturing (TM). Despite this method of manufacturing designs that were seemingly inconceivable in the past, designers often forgo the new design considerations of AM and instead rely on their familiarity with the design considerations more commonly associated with TM, regardless of the manufacturing process they intend to use. This can lead to unnecessary material usage, increased manufacturing time, and can result in designs which are poorly manufactured. To remedy this problem, there is a need to intervene early in the design process to help address any concerns regarding the use of AM design heuristics. This work aims to address this opportunity through a preliminary exploration of the design heuristics that students naturally leverage when creating designs in the context of TM and AM. With the common design heuristics that students are most likely to use in their designs identified, future studies will cement early-stage design support tools that emphasize the significant heuristics found herein. For example, this work found that the design heuristic “incorporating complexity” was the most significant indicator of designs most suited for AM and should therefore be highly encouraged/emphasized when guiding designers in the use of AM. In doing so, it will be possible for early-stage design support tools to maximally improve designs that are intended to be manufactured for AM.