Alibre 2018
- Thread starter Mika
- Start date
VoltsAndBolts
Senior Member
Feels like Christmas! 
bigseb
Alibre Super User
It is!Feels like Christmas!
AlibreCAM 2018 will be coming. The hold up for that is a bug in ACIS which Spatial is hopefully fixing soon. We need to provide information to AlibreCAM in a certain way to support some of the more advanced machining operations that they have implemented since their last release. There's a bug which prevents us from being able to do that.
We've reached out to Spatial and they seem interested in providing a fix, but it's difficult to say exactly when that might happen, and of course anything can happen regarding that.
You would need to ask MecSoft for more details, but the options they have are:
- Release AlibreCAM 2018 without those fancier features (undesirable from their perspective)
- Wait until Spatial has fixed the bug, we have implemented the fix, and have had a release
The ball is rolling, just hard to say how fast.
Max
We've reached out to Spatial and they seem interested in providing a fix, but it's difficult to say exactly when that might happen, and of course anything can happen regarding that.
You would need to ask MecSoft for more details, but the options they have are:
- Release AlibreCAM 2018 without those fancier features (undesirable from their perspective)
- Wait until Spatial has fixed the bug, we have implemented the fix, and have had a release
The ball is rolling, just hard to say how fast.
Max
Idahoan
Member
Sure would be nice if it is before my maintenance expires this spring, I purchased two years from 3D Sys. last go around and well, you know what I got.
I do plan to stay current but it would be nice to get something from my last two years investment. Yes, I do understand that Alibre had nothing to do with it.
I do plan to stay current but it would be nice to get something from my last two years investment. Yes, I do understand that Alibre had nothing to do with it.
MaskOfSanity
Member
I know this problem. At least it was possible to get an upgrade to Alibre 2017 (18.0.3.18412) and a few days later Alibre 2017.1 was released and my maintenance was expired.
A little bit is it annoying that the changes within alibre are not really huge since alibre design 11.2. I think a lot of time was spend by introducing this 3D Printing stuff and animations when connect a part with another. Some oldfashioned things are still there and i am glad to see if there will be any redesigns.
By using the API from Alibre 2017 (which has really small possibilities i think its under heavy construction) i made one thing, which would be really nice to have in Alibre 2018. It is a Box which shows you the constraints which are assigned to the selected part or assembly (I have pictures in my album). This would be something which helps to manage big assemblies.
It would be nice to have new Assembly Constraint types or Joint Types like, too:
- Revolute Constraint/Joint
- Prismatic Constraint/Joint
- Cylindrical Constraint/Joint
- Cartesian Constraint/Joint
A information System if a part is fully constraint would also be really fine.
And a 3D Rendering Engine which has not two faces and two vertical edges for representing a drillhole. Better would be two circle edges and one closed face with a center axis which appears when you move over with your mouse.
This are just a few things which could be made to bring a new user experience for alibre.
A little bit is it annoying that the changes within alibre are not really huge since alibre design 11.2. I think a lot of time was spend by introducing this 3D Printing stuff and animations when connect a part with another. Some oldfashioned things are still there and i am glad to see if there will be any redesigns.
By using the API from Alibre 2017 (which has really small possibilities i think its under heavy construction) i made one thing, which would be really nice to have in Alibre 2018. It is a Box which shows you the constraints which are assigned to the selected part or assembly (I have pictures in my album). This would be something which helps to manage big assemblies.
It would be nice to have new Assembly Constraint types or Joint Types like, too:
- Revolute Constraint/Joint
- Prismatic Constraint/Joint
- Cylindrical Constraint/Joint
- Cartesian Constraint/Joint
A information System if a part is fully constraint would also be really fine.
And a 3D Rendering Engine which has not two faces and two vertical edges for representing a drillhole. Better would be two circle edges and one closed face with a center axis which appears when you move over with your mouse.
This are just a few things which could be made to bring a new user experience for alibre.
Last edited:
oldfox
Alibre Super User
First just let me say, "Happy Birthday". And 40 really is painless.
As for Max, I guess a lot of that depends on the coders, eh.
bigseb
Alibre Super User
Something like that, very dependent on testing. So many core components have changed, so we want to take our time. Think ACIS, DCM, HLM, etc. We upgraded the Visual Studio environment and now support the latest versions of all these 3rd party technologies. This is a major "under the hood" upgrade. As such, lots of testing is needed.
This release will have less obvious changes than a normal one. It's a major upgrade, but less to do with obvious UI things / new features. For example, perhaps ACIS fixed a bug 2 years ago that affects how a 3D fillet might operate for specific geometry. In AD2017, perhaps the fillet would fail, and in the new release, perhaps it wouldn't because we're using the upgraded ACIS. That's just an example to illustrate the kinds of benefits this release is primarily about. There are some notable exceptions that you will notice, but the meat of the release is geared towards modernizing the components, onto which we can build cool stuff down the line.