ACDC: Augmented Creativity for Design Collaboration

In the last ten years, we have been witnessing a huge development of Additive Manufacturing (AM). This manufacturing technology, though invented in the 1980’s, has seen its development and large adoption soar in the last 10 years, due in particular to the development of personal 3D printer largely available to the public. Nevertheless, its main actors have realised that AM being a completely different manufacturing process than formative or subtractive manufacturing, it also requires new design tools and methods in order to take advantage of the new possibilities it offers. This new approach to designing towards AM
possibilities is called Design For Additive Manufacturing (DFAM).
At the same time, another group of technologies has seen its use soar in the last decade: virtual realities. Offering users an immersion in a world merging reality and virtuality, these technologies have proved promising regarding creativity and design. This article aims to present a virtual tool meant to help designers be more creative while designing with and for AM.