Sascha Uncia
Member
I'm new to Alibre, coming from a background in Blender and ZBrush, and a class on Solidworks that ended this winter. I have a lot of questions about how to accomplish certain things in Alibre compared to SW, scenarios I run into where things work differently and I'm not sure of the best way to get the same result. I'm likely to find more but I'll start with these.
Example 1: Midpoints
In Solidworks (I still have a limited time student activation from the class) I can apply a constraint to the midpoint of a line by hovering over it. For example I could apply a horizontal constraint to the midpoint of the left line and the origin. Or, draw something directly on the midpoint and it would be set as coincident.
In Alibre I can draw some shapes directly on the midpoint but it seems unavailable for constraints. The only workaround I could figure out was to draw a line on the midpoint then set the endpoint of that line to vertical, which also forced the rectangle to center on the midpoint. I'm wondering if there's a better way to do this without the workaround.
Example 2: Face Center and Corner Snapping
If I want to find the center of a face in Solidworks I can use, in the case of this rectangle, the method where you hover over the midpoints then use the smart-guides to mark the center point. Or in other cases draw supporting reference geometry. In this case I click one corner and then the diagonal opposite, the midpoint of this line is the center. The ends of the line are automatically snapped to the corners of the reference face with a coincident constraint.
In Alibre if I try this the line firstly doesn't want to snap to anything on draw. If I select the coincident constraint on the endpoint then hover over the edge of the face, it highlights blue but still won't snap to the corner of the face, only the edge.
My solution was to project the whole face onto sketch while maintaining association. It just seems like such a roundabout way of anchoring the sketch that I feel I must be doing something wrong though. Is there a better way to do this?
Question 3: Is there a way to project at an angle, for example if you have a sketch plane at 45 degrees 2 cm over a horizontal face, can you project features straight vertical instead of from the 45 degree plane?
Question 4: How, If possible, do you export to a mixed Quad/Tri mesh instead of a fully triangulated .STL. It could be very useful for example on a smooth model, like a water bottle, jet plane, car body. There doesn't appear to be any other format Blender or ZBrush can open, .ZPR was deceptive
Example 1: Midpoints
In Solidworks (I still have a limited time student activation from the class) I can apply a constraint to the midpoint of a line by hovering over it. For example I could apply a horizontal constraint to the midpoint of the left line and the origin. Or, draw something directly on the midpoint and it would be set as coincident.
In Alibre I can draw some shapes directly on the midpoint but it seems unavailable for constraints. The only workaround I could figure out was to draw a line on the midpoint then set the endpoint of that line to vertical, which also forced the rectangle to center on the midpoint. I'm wondering if there's a better way to do this without the workaround.
Example 2: Face Center and Corner Snapping
If I want to find the center of a face in Solidworks I can use, in the case of this rectangle, the method where you hover over the midpoints then use the smart-guides to mark the center point. Or in other cases draw supporting reference geometry. In this case I click one corner and then the diagonal opposite, the midpoint of this line is the center. The ends of the line are automatically snapped to the corners of the reference face with a coincident constraint.
In Alibre if I try this the line firstly doesn't want to snap to anything on draw. If I select the coincident constraint on the endpoint then hover over the edge of the face, it highlights blue but still won't snap to the corner of the face, only the edge.
My solution was to project the whole face onto sketch while maintaining association. It just seems like such a roundabout way of anchoring the sketch that I feel I must be doing something wrong though. Is there a better way to do this?
Question 3: Is there a way to project at an angle, for example if you have a sketch plane at 45 degrees 2 cm over a horizontal face, can you project features straight vertical instead of from the 45 degree plane?
Question 4: How, If possible, do you export to a mixed Quad/Tri mesh instead of a fully triangulated .STL. It could be very useful for example on a smooth model, like a water bottle, jet plane, car body. There doesn't appear to be any other format Blender or ZBrush can open, .ZPR was deceptive