Generative or additive processes are manufacturing techniques by means of which a workpiece is given its shape by adding material. Their development can be traced back to initiatives which – with the aim of achieving the shortest possible product development time – led to numerous technologies at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s with which prototypes of a component could be produced quickly. Under the term “rapid prototyping”, some of the approaches found their way into industrial practice.