Even though many attempts have been made to define the “Design for Additive Manufacturing” (DfAM), it has been widely used in the literature. Different levels of abstraction have been considered to define DfAM. In particular, at the highest level DfAM may be seen as the exploration of the relationship between manufacturing and design, as well as of its impact on the design practice, designer, and design process. On the other hand, Additive Manufacturing technologies allow the direct fabrication of lightweight structures with tailored properties.

In the biomedical field, the applicability of porous structures and lattices has been widely discussed with a special focus on the design and fabrication of orthopedic implants and scaffolds for tissue regeneration. With regard to tissue engineering, lattices may be properly optimized for cell attachment and growth, as well as in terms of biocompatibility, degradation, bioresorbability, mass transport, and mechanical properties. As an example, volume fraction and shape of a “unit cell” are first selected; then a volume based on the unit cell is built up to create 3D hierarchical porous structures. To obtain specific porosity, mechanical and mass transport properties, the structure of the unit cell must be properly selected or designed.

In this context, different optimization methods are employed to design 3D periodic structures. Topology optimization and several issues related to homogenization and periodicity and manufacturing constraints have to be taken into consideration. Accordingly, this special issue is aimed at presenting the current advances in the design of additively manufactured lattice structures for biomedical applications. For this reason, in the present special issue contributions from leading groups in the field will be invited with the aim of providing a complete view of the current progresses.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Design for Additive Manufacturing
• Lattice structures
• Lightweight structures
• Topology optimization
• Additive Manufacturing
• Computer aided design
• Finite element analysis