Goodbye Alibre.... Hello SolidWorks

[Phil]

After a couple of years and hundreds of parts/models later, we have taken the desision to move away from Alibre and start all new projects in SolidWorks. Given the cost implications, this is not a choice we've made lightly but we do believe it is going to offer us significant benefits.

I appreciate that Alibre may have big plans for forthcoming releases but promises are not as good as tried and tested solutions.

Briefly, the reasons for making the change are:

* Solidworks can offer us a tried-and-tested vault system which can automate many processes and document controls.

* The factories we work with in the far-east use Solidworks

* Complex geometry (multiple radius fillets etc.) are easy in SolidWorks

* Alibre's 2D drawing capabilities are significantly lacking when compared to those further up the price range. Simple things like dimensioning to an "apparent intersection", auto dimesioning and dimension placement etc. It would be nice to insert a simple table into a drawing within Alibre too (copy and paste from excel)

* Sheet metal is a lot more powerful in Solidworks

* Dimensional relations and parametric designs are much easier in SolidWorks.

I'm not knocking Alibre because there is a significant cost difference between the two and I wouldnt' expect an Aston Martin for VW Golf money. It is simply that we feel we have out-grown it.

We will be retaining our Alibre software but not upgrading once our current maintenence agreement expires in the first quarter of 2009.

When I came here in 2007 I was impressed with Alibre (I'd used Solidworks and Pro/Engineer before) and at the time it was perfect for our needs. However, I've raised the bar significantly since then and unfortunatly Alibre cant keep up.

 

[wathavy4]

I hope you're coming back and say more about SW's advantages.
So we can push Alibre to enhance its functionality.
Cheers.

 

[Phil]

We will still have our 3 seats of Alibre so there may well be cause to return here occasionally. :mrgreen:

Is it not rather late at night in Japan?

 

[wathavy4]

Is it not rather late at night in Japan?

Sort of lack of sleep this morning... :mrgreen:

 

[Dabble]

Funny I came across this my company just had a Solid Works demo andt he whole time I was sitting there watching, I was thinking I can do that in Alibre, thats a little easier then in Alibre but is it worth the price tag and so on and so on.

Now some background on the engineering group I am in. All of our design is for internal use Machine design, tooling etc. So compatability for customer is not an issue. As far as drawing goes I always export to Acad just easier for me and yes would be nice if the drawing part of Alibre was cleaner. The main thing I am hoping V11 fixing is the lag in assemblies. I have assemblies with 300+ parts not counting fastners and as you can imagine gets frustrating.

But for now and again different application not customer driven I see no reason for the switch to SolidWorks for us.

Nice to see your company is doing so well. Do I understand correctly you are in Japan? My companies headquarters are there THK Linear Motion perhaps you know of them.

 

[indesign]

We are doing well with Alibre. V11 is much better for speed and several nice new features. We currently do not need the vault but that may change soon.

We must import many different formats from other software. Some files we still must ask for a nuetral format but for the most part we are more interested in our own designs and machining.

As for 2D I would have to say that Alibre is making great advances for the short time they started in it. I too want some of the snap functions available in AC but haven't found too many reasons to export to AC in some time. If you dimension the solids then the dimensions will appear on the 2D so I do not have too many problems there either.

Luckily we do not do very large assemblies but with the speed of V11 on Vista I dont see a 300 piece assembly causing too much lag now. However I think XP is still slow in comparison.

 

[Ralf]

I would also like to introduce my experiences in an amusing way.

I have a car with a Board-Computer, Navigation-System, Sound-System, CD-Player, DVD-Video ...bla, bla...
There are more than 300 functions, BUT I use only ~30-40 functions daily.
If I liked to use one of the other 250 functions, I must look and search and try...because I need these functions not often or never.

My wife has a comfortable "car radio" with CD player and a TomTom, no even more than ~ 20-30 functions.
Both cars go reliably from point A to point B (and very fast) :wink: ... the difference, my car costs 4 times more.

Why I have bought the car? I thought all these great functions help me and they are very niclely...
How do the additional functions help me if I cannot control this?

 

[Phil]

Do I understand correctly you are in Japan? My companies headquarters are there THK Linear Motion perhaps you know of them.

We're in Staffordshire, UK - My comment about the time in Japan was aimed at "wathavy4" who replied soon after my original post, above.

I know THK - I used your linear rails when at a previous company.

 

[wathavy4]

Hi.
Dabble may have mentioned at me.

I am using CoCreate for work. But the office still runs on ME10.
I used AD once for a simple small machine when V9.2.
Damned heavy and I suffered a lot for inserting parts and could not create assembly drawing.
It simply crashed or took infinity of time.

V11 handles 500 over unique parts and 1500 total parts assembly rather smoothly.
Of course the PC is different also, but AD is improved as compared with the previous version.
When I tested the last model with V11, it was a piece of cake to do anything.

P.S.
Yes, I used 4 sets of Linear motion guides for my current model.
THK's for sure.

 

[OTE_TheMissile]

I would also like to introduce my experiences in an amusing way.

I have a car with a Board-Computer, Navigation-System, Sound-System, CD-Player, DVD-Video ...bla, bla...
There are more than 300 functions, BUT I use only ~30-40 functions daily.
If I liked to use one of the other 250 functions, I must look and search and try...because I need these functions not often or never.

My wife has a comfortable "car radio" with CD player and a TomTom, no even more than ~ 20-30 functions.
Both cars go reliably from point A to point B (and very fast) :wink: ... the difference, my car costs 4 times more.

Why I have bought the car? I thought all these great functions help me and they are very niclely...
How do the additional functions help me if I cannot control this?

I know exactly what you mean, we've got the same thing in the R/C industry with radios and battery chargers. You can go out and drop $450 on just the transmitter and receiver for an R/C car and have tuning options that seemingly come to the cusp of auto-pilot. Now maybe if you're a factory driver running the F1-esque 1/8th Nitro Onroad class, you could make good use out of all those features. But then you've got something like my Futaba 3PM FASST that I use in electric dirt cars, offroad trucks and the occasional nitro, for about $200 I get the 2.4GHz signal*, a 3rd channel for shifting the Low-High transmission on my backyard basher truck, just enough adjustments to tell the servos where their centers & endpoints are, and anti-lock braking and a failsafe for the nitro truck. Granted, I've been at this for 8 years now and am well past the basic stuff (i.e., 2 channel fully analog AM radio operating on 27mHz with only steering and throttle/brake trim = $100), but I don't see myself needing anything more out of a radio in the future. To me, all those extras on the $450 system will only screw something up if I start messing with them.

It's the same here at RIVCO: we make bling for Harley Davidsons and Honda Goldwings. It's by no means the Space Shuttle, so Alibre could very well be the only CAD software line we use from now on.


*Brief R/C history: Up until 2.4GHz systems we had to use expensive sets of very fragile crystals to bend the radio frequency so two radios both operating on 27mHz or 75mHz wouldn't interfere with each other. The 2.4GHz systems transmit both a signal and a numeric code that the receiver in the car is trained to recognize, so no more crystals and no more interference

 

[leeave96]

I don't want to pile on, but......

If the enhancements that have been requested for YEARS!!!!!!!!! are not made a priority in V12 - that have been in Solidworks for YEARS!!!!!!, then I can see more folks jumping to SW.

Things like:

1. Icons to show if a part within an assy is fully constrained.

2. Ability to create and disolve subassemblies within an assy.

3. Substitute a part within an assy.

4. Save-as an assy without requiring all parts to be renamed too.

I love Alibre, but the work arounds can/do add-up.

Keep up the great work, but let's have V12 a killer in terms of getting closer to SW.

Thanks!
Bill

 

[Ralf]

Alibre Design Pro/Exp.V11 & Rhino 4 are the SWX killer. :wink: (perhaps even more Adobe Acrobat 3D)
The "thinking" user => 80 centimetres in front of the screen => is the ultimate argument, not the variety of functions.

 

[swertel]

If the enhancements that have been requested for YEARS!!!!!!!!! are not made a priority in V12 - that have been in Solidworks for YEARS!!!!!!, then I can see more folks jumping to SW.

First, you have to put this in the right perspective. Solidworks has features in it that have been requested for YEARS and are now just making it into the package. One reason why Solidworks has so many features is because it has been around for YEARS longer than Alibre.

Keep up the great work, but let's have V12 a killer in terms of getting closer to SW.

I'm all for advancement and improved features, but please be anything but more like Solidworks. There is nothing wrong with having a unique ability instead of just copying the already-done-thats.

 

[fitzbond]

If the enhancements that have been requested for YEARS!!!!!!!!! are not made a priority in V12 - that have been in Solidworks for YEARS!!!!!!, then I can see more folks jumping to SW.

First, you have to put this in the right perspective. Solidworks has features in it that have been requested for YEARS and are now just making it into the package. One reason why Solidworks has so many features is because it has been around for YEARS longer than Alibre.

Keep up the great work, but let's have V12 a killer in terms of getting closer to SW.

I'm all for advancement and improved features, but please be anything but more like Solidworks. There is nothing wrong with having a unique ability instead of just copying the already-done-thats.

This is very easy to forget that SW does have a head start (Almost a 5 year head start) that's why SE and SW are about the same because they started out of the gate at the same time.

 

[leeave96]

Well, I think Alibre is a really nice piece of software - but.......

Things like:

1. Icons to show if a part within an assy is fully constrained.

2. Ability to create and disolve subassemblies within an assy.

3. Substitute a part within an assy.

4. Save-as an assy without requiring all parts to be renamed.

are pretty basic. I think SW had this stuff YEARS before they had a vault add-on.

We have seen a lot of non-core stuff added over the past releases of Alibre and all I am saying is that the above needs some attention - and sooner than later. I've been with AD since at least V6 and have no plans on changing - BUT at my day job, we use SW. On my time, I use AD and the differences sometimes are massive in terms of time savings and abilities w/SW.

I've only noted a few things. Others are:

Visible parent/child relationships, the entire drafting package in SW is much more powerful, etc.

I know that given the price point of AD, there are some things we need to wait for, but some of the basic stuff I and others have been asking for - for YEARS ought to have some attention.

Bill

 

[fitzbond]

Well, I think Alibre is a really nice piece of software - but.......

Things like:

1. Icons to show if a part within an assy is fully constrained.

2. Ability to create and disolve subassemblies within an assy.

3. Substitute a part within an assy.

4. Save-as an assy without requiring all parts to be renamed.

are pretty basic. I think SW had this stuff YEARS before they had a vault add-on.

We have seen a lot of non-core stuff added over the past releases of Alibre and all I am saying is that the above needs some attention - and sooner than later. I've been with AD since at least V6 and have no plans on changing - BUT at my day job, we use SW. On my time, I use AD and the differences sometimes are massive in terms of time savings and abilities w/SW.

I've only noted a few things. Others are:

Visible parent/child relationships, the entire drafting package in SW is much more powerful, etc.

I know that given the price point of AD, there are some things we need to wait for, but some of the basic stuff I and others have been asking for - for YEARS ought to have some attention.

Bill

I don't diagree with you maybe now that they have rewritten the code (v11) they can and will begin to address some of the things you and the rest of us have suggested.

 

[Aytac]

I believe there are some issues that bothers most users and i think these issues can be handled without much effort.

1) Remembering the last window position when starting AD, e.g. I want it to open in fullscreen all the time.

2) An option for the user to assign a default display view, e.g. Shaded & Visible Edges and a default edge color for all and new projects.

3) When clicking twice on the mid mouse button, executing "Zoom to Fit". AC and some other programs have it, i think it is quite useful.

4) Also, instead of scrolling the mid MB for dynamic zoom, option like Ctrl+Shift+LMB. My intellicad has it and it's cool too.

I know there are some softwares and hardwares that workaround these issues but i want to use Alibre without any supplemental.

Especially the first two items make users work faster and they can be done with putting some options in the Tools, Options window.

 

[NateLiquidGravity]

I realize that an in Alibre solution would be best and you mention some can be done with a work around but I figured I would answer for what its worth.

1) Remembering the last window position when starting AD, e.g. I want it to open in fullscreen all the time.

I could use this one and I could probably make an AutoHotkey script that would do this. There are similar ones out there for other programs. Maybe in the next couple of weeks I will.

2) An option for the user to assign a default display view, e.g. Shaded & Visible Edges and a default edge color for all and new projects.

I don't need this but I could probably make an AutoHotkey script that would do this. I would need is to work out the menus and GUI.

3) When clicking twice on the mid mouse button, executing "Zoom to Fit". AC and some other programs have it, i think it is quite useful.

Did this one already. viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4311&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=15#p37325 I would say this saves me the most time.

4) Also, instead of scrolling the mid MB for dynamic zoom, option like Ctrl+Shift+LMB. My intellicad has it and it's cool too.

Do you mean the sketching without auto-constraints? I could probably make an AutoHotkey script that would do this too, but I have a feeling you mean something else.

I know there are some softwares and hardwares that workaround these issues but i want to use Alibre without any supplemental.

Especially the first two items make users work faster and they can be done with putting some options in the Tools, Options window.

I agree. I <3 Options