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misterrogers  
#1 Posted : Wednesday, March 7, 2012 1:49:38 PM(UTC)
misterrogers

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Anyone ever used Alibre before? Is it similar to SW at all?
zumer  
#2 Posted : Wednesday, March 7, 2012 6:41:51 PM(UTC)
zumer

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Alibre is comparable to SW for assemblies, and for making prismatic shapes. It doesn't have anything like the capabilities of SW for parametric non-prismatic shapes, curve and surface analysis, or sheet drawing output. It's good for parametric mostly-prismatic shapes, it does have good sheet metal tools and CAM if you spend more. For non-prismatic shapes and sheet drawing output, I think even VC 2D/3D is easier and stronger. Alibre has the capacity to replace surfaces on objects with others, like VC itself, and they did sell their mid-range app bundled with MoI for a while, but that was before 3DSystems bought them, dunno whether that's still happening. Parametric data is difficult to retain in a useable form when you're trying to open files created two or more releases apart, and if anything, more of their data is locked into their proprietary formats than ours, and Alibre even supply something they call "vault" to try to preserve it, a separate utility to the application.
misterrogers  
#3 Posted : Thursday, March 8, 2012 9:30:16 AM(UTC)
misterrogers

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Originally Posted by: zumer Go to Quoted Post
Alibre is comparable to SW for assemblies, and for making prismatic shapes. It doesn't have anything like the capabilities of SW for parametric non-prismatic shapes, curve and surface analysis, or sheet drawing output. It's good for parametric mostly-prismatic shapes, it does have good sheet metal tools and CAM if you spend more. For non-prismatic shapes and sheet drawing output, I think even VC 2D/3D is easier and stronger. Alibre has the capacity to replace surfaces on objects with others, like VC itself, and they did sell their mid-range app bundled with MoI for a while, but that was before 3DSystems bought them, dunno whether that's still happening. Parametric data is difficult to retain in a useable form when you're trying to open files created two or more releases apart, and if anything, more of their data is locked into their proprietary formats than ours, and Alibre even supply something they call "vault" to try to preserve it, a separate utility to the application.



The sheet metal tools is what I found most interesting. Fairly affordable - though no mac version unfortunately. Just checked and it is still bundled with MoI. MoI has a mac beta version as of Jan 2012. On a side note, I've recently discovered Corel has a cad program for both win/mac - but it's pretty spartan as far as 3d capabilities goes. Shark still seems to be the best option on the mac side. Though I wish it had sheet metal and unfolding capabilities.
sporeleki  
#4 Posted : Thursday, March 8, 2012 9:36:21 AM(UTC)
sporeleki

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that would be too handy.
David
ZeroLengthCurve  
#5 Posted : Thursday, March 8, 2012 10:20:37 AM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: zumer Go to Quoted Post
....Alibre has the capacity to replace surfaces on objects with others, like VC itself,....


Say, I'm curious to know whether or not it can "clean up" or reduce control points in meshes or surfaces, or turn VC/Shark meshes into cleaner surfaces, with less manual stitching of facets or joining of exploded curve segments.

For certain tight areas, I convert meshes to surfaces, and then the surfaces to curves, then delete the intervening curves and use the outside curves. I join them and then turn those into interpolated splines, then build a surface from them. I have to to this since my imported model (from PolyCAD or from Freeship Plus) gets turned into meshes. They look BEAUTIFUL often as they are, but pretty much all I can do with those meshes, which faithfully represent my model, is to draw lines from them or to them. But, they don't respond as boundaries for cutting or limiting other geometry. Lamentable, since I have hours and hours of work anytime I have to destroy or reshape a parent mesh. I don't like decomposing a good smooth mesh (at highest quality from Freeship) only to have it turn into 14,258 somesuch facets, any one of which could form slightly "off" and wreck my long-stretch sessions.

But, fortunately, in Freeship, I can create bspline surfaces and use bspline curves and replace any extremely-point-loaded curves with a bspline curve of least squares (?) and make a surface of 4 to 8 points. It just is tedious and risks some translation issues if the work is too compound or complex.
zumer  
#6 Posted : Thursday, March 8, 2012 5:01:29 PM(UTC)
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ZLC, short answer is not at all.
Cary  
#7 Posted : Thursday, March 8, 2012 9:09:20 PM(UTC)
Cary

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I've seen this name but don't know more about it. Solidworks is more famous I think.
zumer  
#8 Posted : Thursday, March 8, 2012 11:27:26 PM(UTC)
zumer

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Originally Posted by: misterrogers Go to Quoted Post
On a side note, I've recently discovered Corel has a cad program for both win/mac - but it's pretty spartan as far as 3d capabilities goes.


Deelip Menezes' blog noted that Corel app, I think it's rebranded from something else, and started life as an AutoCAD clone. I still have a very old TurboCAD version that dates back about 12-14 years, called TurboCAD Solid Modeler. It's a parametric modeler very similar to Alibre, although less thoroughly developed. It started life as CorelCAD until TC bought it....
BurrMan  
#9 Posted : Friday, March 9, 2012 1:02:11 AM(UTC)
BurrMan

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I have Corel Visual Cadd. It was only 2d drafting, but had a multitude of house layouts in a dxf (or something) format... If I get better at ViaCad, I may have to break it out to get at some archi stuff!! :)
m.marino  
#10 Posted : Friday, March 9, 2012 4:32:53 AM(UTC)
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Alibre is mostly directed at CAM and if you are looking at the sheet metal side of things I would strongly suggest checking out CamBam as while it is dedicated CAM (only minor CAD functions at all) it is a very useful tool for g-code generation and set up. If you are heavy into 3D type CNC and on a bit of a budget DeskProto is very useful in the 3D field. Just my experience and 2 cents worth.

Michael
SharkCAD Pro v10 w/ PowerPack Pro
Lenovo D20 2x E5620 w/ 64GB RAM, Nvidia 1060
OS: Windows 10 Pro x64
MM0MSU



lgrijalva  
#11 Posted : Friday, March 9, 2012 2:45:04 PM(UTC)
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My business is sheet metal kiosks for self attendance services.

on my experience, for sheet metal your best options (in companion which shark/viacad) are solid works and space claim, both offer a very solid (space claim more intuitive IMHO) sheet metal convertion and develop from shelling models made on others software.

I gave a shoot to allibre and varicad a couple years ago and they didn't hook to my preferences.

The only advantage from this ones, is of course, price range.

Luis G.
Luis G
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www.miditec.com.mx
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