AM Data Management Working Group 

Additive Manufacturing Common Data Model

Kareem Aggour, PhD

March 17, 2023
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Overarching Goal

• Make Additive Manufacturing (AM) data FAIR – Findable, Accessible, 

Interoperable, and Reusable

• Lack of a common vocabulary, common representation, and common 

exchange formats all hinder these goals

• According to GO FAIR, the FAIR Principles include:

• Findable: “Metadata and data should be easy to find for both humans and computers.”

• Interoperable: “(Meta)data use a formal, accessible, shared and broadly applicable 

language for knowledge representation.” and

• Reusable: “... metadata and data should be well -described so that they can be replicated 

and/or combined in different settings.”
• build ID – globally unique identifier 

of a build, of type string

• powder lot ID – globally unique 

identifier of a lot of powder, of type 

string

• powder reuse number – the 

number of times the powder has 

been reused, of type int > 0

• ASTM F3490-21

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Common Data Dictionary

Common Data Model in context of CDD and CDEF

Build is a class,

defined by buildID with a single

value of type string,

defined by powderLot with values

of type PowderLot. // by saying “with 

values” I am stating that a single build 

could use multiple powder lots

PowderLot is a class,

defined by powderLotID with a

single value of type string,

defined by powderReuseNumber with

a single value of type int.

Common Data Model

{

"Build": {

"buildID": “abc123-build”,

“powderLot": [

{ "powderLotID": “def456-powder”,

"powderReuseNumber": 2 },

{ "powderLotID": “ghi789-powder”,

"powderReuseNumber": 0 } ]

}

}

Common Data Exchange Format

Defines terms, but no 

structure/relationships – good 

for humans, not machines

Defines logical structure and 

relationships in a human - and 

computer -readable format

Defines format for systems to 

share data, aligned to the CDM 

in both structure and terms

>> >>

The CDEF is built to exchange data modeled by the CDM, which puts structure around the CDD.

So, the CDEF builds upon the CDM, which in turn builds upon the CDD.
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Making Additive Manufacturing Data FAIR through a Common Data Model

Users can explore & select 

attributes of interest from a 

Common Data Model (CDM)

SemTKuses metadata mappings 

linking CDM to each data stores’ 

data model to generate queries

NIST

AMMD

AFRL

HyperThought

System

X

Hexagon

MaterialCenter

GE Federated

Digital Thread 

Platform

Use a Common Data Model to make additive manufacturing data 

Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable

Retrieve & Map

GEFDTP  CDM

Retrieve & Map

AMMD  CDM

Retrieve & Map

AFRL HT  CDM

Retrieve & Map

DMSAM  CDM

Retrieve & Map

Sys X  CDM

Data retrieved from stores and 

mapped to CDM for integration

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...

...

...

...
• Kareem Aggour, GE Research

• Peter Coutts, Penn State ARL

• Joy Gockel, Colorado School of Mines

• Brennan Harris, INL

• Jiaze(Jason) He, U Alabama

• Alex Kitt, EWI

• Shengyen Li, NIST

• Yan Lu, NIST

• AfinaLupulescu, ASM International

• Hunter Macdonald, Hexagon

• Michael McNair, SAE ITC

• Luke Mohr, EWI

• Mike Vasquez, 3Degrees

• Bob Zollo, AvanteTech

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AM Common Data Model Working Group

GitHub repo: https://github.com/kaggour/AM-CDM
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Excerpts from CDM (written in SADL)

Semantic Application Design Language (SADL) –

https://github.com/SemanticApplicationDesignLanguage

Base

Material

System

Process

Test-Inspection-Characterization

Build
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Build-centric view (visualized in SemTK)

Base

Material

System

Process

Test-Inspection-Characterization

Build

Semantics Toolkit (SemTK) –

https://github.com/ge-semtk/semtk
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Material-centric view (visualized in SemTK)

Base

Material

System

Process

Test-Inspection-Characterization

Build

Semantics Toolkit (SemTK) –

https://github.com/ge-semtk/semtk