Field driven engineering: Improving design and manufacturing interconnectivity

Additive Manufacturing (AM) provides a selection of new opportunities for designers; however, the current design and manufacturing workflow is still limited. Data conversion, file size, and discretization are among the factors that restrict the full potential of AM. This positional paper aims to overcome these limitations by proposing a new design and manufacturing workflow based on Fields and Implicit Modelling. The workflow is influenced by new developments in commercial computer-aided design software, and it speculates on how these developments can be expanded to benefit the overall design and manufacturing process. Finally, the paper presents advantages, current limitations, and future research directions for the implementation of Fields and Implicit Modelling in design and engineering.