-2. (added on another edit 3/17/08 as I used Alibre quite a bit last week, and was getting frustrated by this) - Edit sketch plane/face. I modelled a stamped A-arm, which had welded tubes that the bushings go into. When I changed the design, I had to create from scratch again the bushing tubes since the parent now had different faces. If I could re-assign the sketch planes to a different face, it would have saved all the rework. I envision this as an option box when you right click the sketch in the design explorer tree. I bet it's already in the backend somewhere, and an API could probably get written, but I'm no programmer.
0. SHOW THE COINCIDENT CONSTRAINT ON THE DRAWINGS!!! (and make the various flyouts and toolbars dockable). Check out Rhino3d for a good lead. Everything is configurable there...
1. Mirror (copy) parts in assemblies, where you can pick the part and mirror plane (just like in parts). This would save a ton of time for parts that have been placed with complicated constraints & trimmed to fit, when you just need a mirror copy... Inside parts isn't useful in this instance, since parts are positioned on assemblies, and the mirror plane depends on the assembly, not inside a part. A 2 item 180 deg Circular Pattern Feature does this almost, but it basically mirrors it on 2 planes instead of one.
2. Top Assembly level sketches that all sub parts can access, so you can do true top down modelling of individual parts. For a rollcage example: You can make a simple 3d line drawing, and each individual (contiguous)line can be a path for sweep boss (a tube). Right now it's very tedious to make a tube as a part, then place it in assemblies, then go back to part level to project interferences so you can cut the ends to match up against other tubes, etc...
3. One I just thought of, similar to a thinwall boss command. If you have line segments, you could create a sketch profile of the tube, and then select which lines to apply that profile to. Simpler way of doing sweep tubes that avoids creating perpendicular planes and axis for every single tube.
4. Color by feature and color by face (right click on a feature in the design tree, and change it's color) (on edit 3/16/08 - feel free to ignore this in my count of 8 suggestions, since others already have it)
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5. GD&T (or at least +- tolerance on the dimension!) built into the part model which the drawing picks up. It's tedious to go into the part drawing and have to add text to all the dimensions.
6. Interference stops motion in the motion module
7. Formulas and sequences allowed as motion input. If I want to move part1 relative 0,0,1 inches and then turn part 2 90 degrees, that would be great! You could now model (and animate) machines as a movement sequence instead of one step at a time...
Let me know if you guys want more ideas!
Andris
Edit MH: added from subsequent post
-1. I just remembered this (on edit, I'm over 8, so ignore another one!), and it's my most important wish:
Please let us access individual part dimensions in other parts. Handle it like Excel, where the non-internal dimension name is the path/part name and dimension (is Alibre smart enough to handle this if the files are all in the repository?).
So many times in assemblies I have one part who's dimensions are driven by another part. You could make a simplified drawing (skeleton sketch?) that contains the critical dimensions, and use that to drive many of the other parts in the assembly. Much easier to quickly adjust dimensions in a skeleton part with only the critical dims than having to go into every single part and edit the formulas themselves. Possible (sort-of) with the Excel module, but that's still not realtime or very convenient for quick changes.
Andris
