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This paper provides a review of the current state of the art in modeling of laser direct metal deposition and cladding processes and identifies recent advances and trends in this field. The different stages of the process and the features, strengths and weaknesses of models relating to them are discussed. Although direct metal deposition is now firmly in the industrial domain, the benefits to be gained from reliable predictive modeling of the process are still to be fully exploited. The genuine progress there has been in this field in the last five years, particularly in discretized modeling, means modeling cannot be overlooked as an enabling method for academia and industry, but there is still more work to be done.