Comparison of different CAE software of design for additive manufacturing

The increasing interest, in the last decade, about additive manufacturing techniques brought to a rediscovery of topology optimization. The companies began to strive for light weight parts to optimize the machines and reduce energy consumption. To answer the requests of the designers, the enormous CAD/CAE software corporations included Topology Optimization in their multi-directed platforms, so that at present day, plenty of software are available. However, introducing engineers to an entirely new software tool with a new user interface and potentially unfamiliar workflow could delay or hinder incorporation of topology optimization into industry design practice. The aim of the present work is to outline a method that allows the identification of the best software to be used as aid in designing for additive manufacturing. The analysis considered the capabilities, the easiness of usage and the quality of the results of the software. As a case study, three software have been tested using the same component, the same load conditions and the same material properties. The results of the topology optimization were post-processed, following the complete workflow that leads from the original component to a component ready for the production. The main software features were identified and categorised in two main groups: basic and advanced. A large variety of data about the identified characteristics were collected during the optimization workflow. The software considered as the case study were finally compared in a structured manner adopting a multicriteria fuzzy analytic hierarchy process based on the characteristics earlier selected.