## 1 Introduction
### Comparison with Other AM Platforms  
Several different AM platforms in the market offer manufacturing execution or AM production capabilities as a service. Manufacturing service providers such as Materialise, Stratasys, Formlabs, Shapeways, Protiq, 3D-Hubs, and others provide similar manufacturing options at different capacities. These companies usually have access to proprietary machines and software. These platforms come with their own features and require a significant amount of time for engineers and designers to understand how they work and how they may be adapted to their own needs. When reviewing the services provided by the likes of Materialise, Protiq, Shapeways (Figure 1), or others, it is to be noted that what is offered to users is more of a marketplace, where the user defines the requirements to print parts and then place an order for having those parts printed. These platforms typically are also capable of providing a delivery date. However, being a web-based service, the downside with such services is that there is no direct integration with CAD software environments. As the designer must exit the design environment and move to a different software application, which requires the designer to upload the file in a specific CAD format, experimentation with a different version of the same design is more error-prone and time-consuming. At the same time, whenever a user wishes to check what the consequences will be in case the quality parameters (such as finishing quality) are changed, the same process will have to be followed again. Additionally, the user typically receives no feedback about the process parameters, such as layer thickness, or the AM machine that will be used for printing the part. In case there are strict requirements regarding layer thickness, density or even the machine to be used, there is usually no straightforward way to input these requirements in these platforms. Furthermore, the cost and time estimations received by the user are typically based on part volume and support information and not on the output of a CAM/slicing software tool, which may mean that cost and time estimations are not as accurate as they could be. Features of these platforms include:  
* Automated generation of support structures (not user viewable);
* Repair of STL model (not user viewable);
* Selection of process parameter (not user viewable);
* Quality selection (the user has limited options);
* They are oriented towards enterprise or early-adoption customers that have a finished design and need a prototype;
* Material selection is limited--they typically use medium to high-end materials. Furthermore, there are other software packages like Netfabb, Repetier (Figure 2), or Simplify3D, that can cater to a wide range of 3D printing systems, or build platforms by importing machine/system settings directly from their website repository or by specifically feeding in different parameters for specific platforms and materials within the software to create profiles or printer configurations. Such software provides more flexibility to the designer by allowing for more customization options down to the minute details like support density, layer thickness, infill density, material options, extrusion options, and many others depending on the AM technology. The use of this software, however, is not an automated procedure since the designer is required to have intricate knowledge of the slicing/CAM tool software. Specific versions of software packages like Netfabb or Repetier are free-to-use software packages, whereas Simplify3D is a commercial software tool, providing the flexibility to import printers and configuration files through their website with a proprietary slicing engine. The list of features of these platforms include:  
* They are highly flexible--and therefore the setup with host and server is complex. * The capability of repairing defective STL meshes. * Control of layer thickness, material, density, and other process parameters is allowed.