Alibre Design Expert Price

[Griselda Hamiter]

CommentsAs a user of SolidWorks at work, I wanted a system that I could use at home with similar capabilities; SolidWorks did not offer a suitable license for this purpose. I discovered Alibre around 2013 and was surprised to find that it closely matched the performance of SolidWorks at an affordable cost, and even more surprised to find that it ran well on my home computer. I used it for parallel work to my day job, for exporting Alibre models into SolidWorks, and for other work on my own account.When I retired in 2019 and set up a small home business, I added a CAM add-in and used Alibre to model products and generate toolpaths for their production on a small CNC machine in my garage; it has paid for itself many times over.

Having used SolidWorks at work since 2000, I have found Alibre to be capable of virtually the same performance at home at a small fraction of the cost.- In addition, it runs well on my basic home desktop PC, and it can import SW native files (though without retaining the feature tree). For someone who is comfortable working in SolidWorks, ProE, etc, Alibre is very much the same at lower cost.- The Alibre license is permanent, unlike other CAD systems. You can subscribe to maintenance support, but if you decide to let that lapse your system license is still good - you lose the maintenance but still can continue to use the software.- Alibre's customer service has also been consistently very good, every question receives careful attention and an immediate helpful response.

This is not really Alibre's fault, but the discontinuation of a CAM add-in called AlibreCAM 2020 (as I understand, this was not actually an Alibre product but made by MecSoft) around 2021 was unfortunate - it was excellent and seamless in Alibre and critical to my work. In order to retain this discontinued product, I have not updated my system to the most recent version of Alibre.

Comments:I am now going on my 3rd year using this software. The technical support is fast and responsive. Each year I receive updates, and many times, during periods of travel between states, my floating license was very convenient, allowing me to set up my workstation on location. Great product, great company.

This is quality CAD software at a very affordable price. I have used Solidworks, AutoCAD, ProEngeer. I have been able to do virtually everything I did with those packages at a fraction of the cost. Best investment for a small engineering consulting company.

Comments:My overall experience is that yes, this is functional CAD software, but you will be at least three times faster and ten times less frustrated if you use a more reputable program like AutoCad or Solidworks.

It is similar enough to Solid Works, so it was not too hard to learn on the fly. There is a metal simulation portion of the software that is very useful for bending and shaping metal components with decent realism.

The commands are not too hard to learn, but the software is extremely clunky, not responsive, and does not give much of an hint if there is a mistake in the drawing (overlapping line, enclosed loop, etc.). The program crashes regularly even running a on a brand new Thinkpad laptop with up to date specs. Lines have trouble "snapping" to points even when that option is turned on. And my largest gripe are that the user manual is pathetic, and their website is even worse when it comes to understanding featuresbor troubleshooting.

Comments:Absolutely wonderful, the workflow is logical, the interface is clean and it runs smoothly on my computer.Having had experience since high school (in the F1 in Schools Program) with CATIA, SolidWorks, ProDesktop and ProEngineer and having used Inventor at university, AlibreDesign Expert was a 100% seamless experience - no learning curve at all - doing the common things were much faster with the cleaner interface.

The ease of use. Everything is clearly laid out in a logic flow. You only see the things you need at a time which leaves the UI clean and very user friendly.Also, the ability to import common file formats (CATIA, SolidWorks, Inventor, ProE, NX, etc.) makes Alibre Design Expert the go to.Lastly the pricing is perfect for those of us who use the software both professionally and personally at home. As an engineer having my own commercial use licence lets me consult and design when I need to, as I need to.

I moved from TurboCAD 2D and had a very little Solidworks experience, the switch was very easy, Alibre is intuitive, after a couple of easily available tutorials I was making useful 3D models and drawings.

Hello all. The bit that I have been missing over the previous 4 years of my Shapeoko use is creating my own models to carve. I have tried many different software flavours including Sketchup, Fusion 360, FreeCad, TurboCad, CC, MeshCAM, TinkerCAD, Blender, Shapr3D and a few others besides. Yesterday, I took the plunge and purchased Plasticity (Indie version 1.4).

This gave me access to a perpetual licence and two seats for very reasonable money (140 including taxes). The approved nodes can be a mix of operating systems. I have one node on my 5k Retina, 27 inch iMac and one node on my 27 inch screen Win 11 Pro computer. I made the decision that I would learn more about the arcane and dark art of 3D modelling. A trawl through the latest available software revealed that I might understand more of the subject with Plasticity.

The geometric modelling engine is Parasolid from Siemens. The software utilises Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS). It is not, strictly speaking, a Parametric software but a recent update has added dimensioning and measurements. I found the concepts for software use to be the easiest introduction to 3D modelling I have ever known. There are numerous online YouTube video sessions for new and experienced users and I am viewing many of these video presentations at this time.

If you have struggled, like me, to become effective at drafting 3D models, Plasticity may be a route worth examining. You can do this risk free for 30 days with the free trial of the fully featured software.

One can specify a preference like Blender mouse behaviours. Some of the shortcut keys are Blender like too. I use a tragic macpad for most of my Mac work but the centre mouse wheel for zoom and 3D movement is not so easy to replicate so I use a wireless mouse too.

The Plasticity ease of use seems remarkable to me. My first attempt was a cheese wedge shaped part with through holes, fillets and chamfers. It could not have felt any more logical in use and I look forward to modelling all of my own projects now.

I use Carveco Maker ($18 monthly subscription) for my CAM work. I found the look and feel of the sofware much more akin to modern software design language. My 3D carves have been simplicity and as easy to do in both gSender and Carbide Motion.

My trial of Vectric V Carve Pro software made me feel like I was back using MS DOS and Windows 3.11 because of the user interface. That may have been because I was using it through the Macintosh Bootcamp software. I now have a well specified N100 mini Windows 11 Pro box and that has made my Windows journey so much better. I can also access the Windows box from my house using MS RDP and that has been a great solution.

I was surprised at how logical it was to use. I found Shapr3D was almost there for ease of use but some weirdness in menu access made me dislike it. Plasticity is really transparent in the user interface and that assists me to plan and remember a series of actions.

Similar price for Alibre which I purchased a month or so ago. It is a more traditional 3D CAD app but one that works very well for that price point. It seems logical in operation to me and has some very decent training videos.

Alibre Workshop combines Alibre's Atom CAD product and MeshCAM Pro for Alibre into a single purchase. Easy to learn CAD: A simplified yet powerful toolset lets you design great things quickly and precisely.Easy to learn CAM: The CAM...

Alibre Design 2019 features a well-designed interface and easy-to-use tools. As you sketch and add features, each appears in the history tree located within the Design Explorer panel on the left. Images courtesy of David Cohn.

Built on the ACIS modeling kernel and a 2D constraint system from Siemens, Alibre helped users to create parametric solid models driven by intelligent dimensions. Although the program has been continuously updated since its launch nearly 20 years ago, there were some bumps along the way.

You can create Parts in the Part workspace. You begin with a closed 2D sketch that is turned into a 3D feature by extruding, lofting, revolving and sweeping. You can then select a plane or planar face, sketch another profile and add or remove material. Rather than constantly going back to the ribbon as you work, you can press the spacebar to access a context-sensitive menu or right-click to display shortcut menus.

In the Bill of Materials (BOM) workspace, you can generate BOMs that show information about the various files that comprise the assembly. As the final step in the design process, you move into the 2D Drawing workspace, inserting parts or assemblies to create standard orthographic, 3D and engineering views to which you then add dimensions and notes to document your designs. Because the software is parametric, any change made to any file within the design is automatically reflected in all the assemblies, BOMs and drawings that reference that file.

There is also a Global Parameters workspace, which serves as a central repository of variables, equations and values that you can use across multiple parts and assemblies. This workspace looks similar to the Equation Editor found in the Part, Sheet Metal and Assembly workspaces. The primary difference is that the Global Parameters can be used between files, whereas the Equation Editor is restricted to a single file.

All six workspaces have a well-designed, common look and feel. With the exception of the BOM workspace, each includes a large work area with a ribbon across the top. Ribbon-based tools are organized into clearly labeled panels. Tool icons are easy to identify, with identification further aided by tooltips that appear whenever you hover the cursor over a button. When you activate a tool, prompts appear at the bottom of the screen.

3a8082e126