Status, issues, and future of computer-aided part orientation for additive manufacturing

Part orientation is a critical task in the process of additive manufacturing product realisation. Recently, various computer-aided methods for this task have been presented in the literature. The coexistence of different methods generates a series of questions: What are the common characteristics of these methods? What are the specific characteristics of each method? What are the main issues in computer-aided part orientation for additive manufacturing currently? What are the potential research directions in this field in the future? To approach these questions, a review of the existing computer-aided part orientation methods for additive manufacturing is presented in this paper. This review starts with a clarification of a part orientation problem and a classification of the existing methods into two categories according to their process of solving the problem. An overview of the representative methods in each category is then carried out from the aspects of approaches for orientation search, generation, or selection, estimation of build orientation factors, determination of weights of factors, establishment of overall objective function, and demonstration of effectiveness. After that, a discussion about the main issues in computer-aided part orientation for additive manufacturing is documented based on the overview. Finally, a suggestion of some future research directions in this field is reported.