Additive manufacturing (AM) provides opportunities to design objects differently than
traditional manufacturing methods allow, but only if designers understand the possibilities AM
presents. In this study, we examined whether an AM workshop combined with an idea generation
session could inspire engineering professionals to use AM solutions to solve current technical
problems they face. All subjects were employees at an organization that will be referred to as
Company X, a multinational commercial organization based in North America. During the study,
we collected ideas for 24 projects generated before and after a training workshop focused on design
for AM. In the workshop, we provided three hours of instruction about design for two metal-based
AM processes. The participants’ ideas were assessed using four specific metrics: (1) cost, (2) time,
(3) completeness of solution, and (4) quality, which was a function of feasibility, usefulness, and
novelty. Using these data, we explored whether the workshop was effective in inspiring the
participants to use AM methods and techniques from AM research in their concept generation and
whether participants’ AM solutions showed improvement in cost, implementation time, and
quality over non-AM designs generated before the workshop.Mechanical Engineerin
