**Advanced Design for Additive Manufacturing: 3D Slicing and 2D Path Planning**

Donghong Ding, Zengxi Pan, Dominic Cuiuri, Huijun Li and Stephen van Duin

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/63042

#### **Abstract**

Commercial 3D printers have been increasingly implemented in a variety of fields due to their quick production, simplicity of use, and cheap manufacturing. Soft‐ ware installed in these machines allows automatic production of components from computer-aided design (CAD) models with minimal human intervention. However, there are fewer options provided, with a limited range of materials, limited path patterns, and layer thicknesses. For fabricating metal functional parts, such as laserbased, electron beam-based, and arc-welding-based additive manufacturing (AM) machines, usually more careful process design requires in order to obtain compo‐ nents with the desired mechanical and material properties. Therefore, advanced design for additive manufacturing, particularly slicing and path planning, is necessary for AM experts. This chapter introduces recent achievements in slicing and path planning for AM process.

**Keywords:** Additive Manufacturing, GMAW, GTAW, Path Planning, 3D Slicing, Welding, Medial Axis Transform, STL
