Surface tools?

[Hunter]

Hi, I'm hoping to get some feedback from someone at Alibre or perhaps someone else who knows.

Are there any plans going forward to include surfacing creation tools in Alibre? As in, extruding/revolving/sweeping sketches to create surfaces, trim surfaces, and split surfaces?

I often have to create surfaces for FEA preprocessing purposes, I can't do everything that is required with Alibre. I've tried FreeCAD (they're not there yet), Fusion's reselling model doesn't work for me, SW, Inventor, and SE are all too pricey. I'm now looking into IronCAD (don't know it at all) and SpaceClaim (also new to me), but would prefer to stay with Alibre.

Regards,
William

 

[GIOV]

Are there any plans going forward to include surfacing creation tools in Alibre? As in, extruding/revolving/sweeping sketches to create surfaces, trim surfaces, and split surfaces?

That Alibre needs.
For now I recommend you Rhinoceros 4-7 or MOI but you will not have a parametric surface properties.

 

[Hunter]

Yes, I tried the MOI and Rhino route, but really need parametric surfaces (FEA work is often iterative). MOI very impressive, but I found it too frustrating to work with for preprocessing (not what it was meant for in any case).

I also tried the latest Salome (new Shaper module), and whilst it has parametric surface creation tools, one cannot do self-intersecting sweeps (something I need from time to time), and the interface is horrible. Most of these open source CAD tools are just not good enough if you're used to commercial CAD.

 

[GIOV]

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