Additive manufacturing processes show potential and utility in the construction industry by enabling new design freedoms and increasing the degree of automation. Accurate prediction of structural deformations and optimization of process parameters is a crucial consideration to ensure better component quality, reduced test effort and fewer buildability failures. This paper introduces an approach to build a nonlinear model that maps the interlayer waiting time in the building process to the corresponding structural deformation based on FEM results obtained from a process based FEM simulation. The model is utilized to optimize the interlayer waiting time during the printing process using the maximum deformation of the structure as the objective function and the allocated printing time together with the allowed maximum interlayer waiting time as constraints. Finally, the validity of the approach is numerically verified using a test component.