Alibre Design

Exceptional value for money

Kommentare: As 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.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

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.

Absolutely Wonderful

Kommentare: 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.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

Nothing - Alibre Design Expert does everything I need.

Powerful easy to use CAD with flexible licensing

Vorteile:

Powerful and easy to use software / not subscription based.

Nachteile:

N/A - my experience has been entirely positive.

Not Even For Free

Kommentare: Spent four hours trying to do a 15 minute OpenSCAD job.

Vorteile:

It's free. The price. Forty characters for "free".

Nachteile:

The UI is slow, heavy, convoluted and "sticky". The draft-based editing is clumsy, limited, and assigns correlations and confinements seemingly at random. Parametric entry is borderline impossible; there are four or five types of lines and whichever one you're defining a shape with is the wrong one. Any promise of defining complicated shapes depends on whether or not you are the giving the sales pitch.

Alibre Design Expert

Kommentare: 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.

Vorteile:

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.

Nachteile:

I have no complaints. I am a happy camper with this product. I