What's new

Update to V25

Sudirob

New Member
I may be wrong about all the excitement and waiting for V25 update, but! what did i get for my £70 maintenance With Alibre Atom?? as i see no improvement in Atom with it limited tools or no emboss? did i miss something or
 

DavidJ

Administrator
Staff member
I may be wrong about all the excitement and waiting for V25 update, but! what did i get for my £70 maintenance With Alibre Atom?? as i see no improvement in Atom with it limited tools or no emboss? did i miss something or
Atom3D doesn't get the first 3 major items listed, but I believe gets pretty much everything else.

Also gets background stuff that doesn't even get mentioned in the list, such as updates to the file import/export module.
 

Howard

Member
It’s a bit of a CON!! The only thing I can see I got with the update to V25 is the Explorer, Toolbar, Menu [1:59] which is not a help or improvement into drawing and designing, all the other advantages that they advertise is a no,no for Atom users!

When you go to their V25 tutorial you see clearly that it is only meant for ‘Alibre Design Expert’ users.

I have been using Alibre Atom since 2018 and this is not the first time that this has happened, all in all, I’m pretty pleased with the software but paying 90 euro per year for one improvement in a complete new version is not acceptable.

Alibre management take note, you have some unsatisfied Atom customers out there!
 

DavidJ

Administrator
Staff member
Howard,

Expanded snapping
SVG import/export from 2D sketch
OBJ export
Support for side by side installation (future benefit)
Core properties able to be set as defaults
Equation editor column width remembered in session..
Update to import export module (important if you import from other systems)
Assorted bug fixes

Maybe not 'big' features, but many are helpful with designing. Most users 12 months maintenance will cover 2 version updates.
 

simonb65

Alibre Super User
I’m pretty pleased with the software but paying 90 euro per year for one improvement in a complete new version is not acceptable.
The choice to pay active maintenance is 100% your decision. No one is forcing you to pay it every year. For home use, do you really need every update? There are many application I use that only get updated when a feature that is useful for me is added. Some applications I use haven't been updated for years ... I still use WinNT Server 2000, Office 2010, CorelDraw X5 and MOI v3, because nothing in newer versions adds anything to what I can already do, so why outlay more money! Do you really need a paid CAD at all for hobby use? As I say, the choice is yours.
 

Howard

Member
Howard,

Expanded snapping
SVG import/export from 2D sketch
OBJ export
Support for side by side installation (future benefit)
Core properties able to be set as defaults
Equation editor column width remembered in session..
Update to import export module (important if you import from other systems)
Assorted bug fixes

Maybe not 'big' features, but many are helpful with designing. Most users 12 months maintenance will cover 2 version updates.

Hi David,

I can see that you’re a staff member and supporting Alibre which is normal. But come on, these updates are pretty poor:

  • Expanding Snapping, Had this in V24 [or very similar]
  • Import/Export, nothing to do with designing.
  • Core Properties, nothing to do with designing.
  • Side by Side installation, so we have to pay for Alibre future developments come on…….. and this has nothing to do with designing
  • Core properties able to be set as defaults, nothing to do with designing
  • Update to import export module, nothing to do with designing
  • Assorted bug fixes, Shouldn’t have been there in the first place, software writer errors, and once again nothing to do with designing.

  • Also, I have never had 2 Version updates in one year.

  • Want to see what improvements I get from Microsoft Office in one year? And this also costs me 90 euro per year.

  • So you can see I’m a little pi…. Off, and as I can see on the forum so are others! Management, take note.
 

DavidJ

Administrator
Staff member
Howard - you are entitled to your opinion. I disagree with a number of your points.

Expanded snapping for example - no you didn't have this in v24. The 'expanded' refers to adding the behaviour to apply to entities that previously didn't have this, to make the design process smoother and quicker. A feature that people liked has been implemented across more of the software.

If you need to (say) import a SolidWorks file to include in your design, having up to date import module can be critical (or file may not open, or may import with errors). Newer import modules generally become more robust and support newer file formats.

Being able to set default core properties can be a significant time/frustration saver - forum users have previously complained about the inability to do so.

Side by side installation - this has been very widely requested by forum users, who want to be able to either run more than one version of Alibre on same computer (say for compatibility with customers), or run a Beta release without having to remove the current production version. Presumably people requested this because they see value in it. V25 introduces the changes to support this, but we won't be able to take full advantage until v26 is available.

Bug fixes - any complex software at consumer/business prices has bugs (unfortunately), lots of reasons for this. Some bug fixes do have direct influence on the design workflow. Many users here would argue that fixing bugs should be much higher priority than adding new features.

Version upgrades - just review the release dates on the downloads page to see when the last few were released. Having made releases more frequent, the scope of each release does naturally tend to be somewhat smaller (but less prone to delay).

MS Office is sold (or rented these days, little choice about whether to pay each year or not) to millions of users, 3D CAD is much more niche by comparison, so trying to compare costs is meaningless.

In my earlier posts I was pointing out some items that Atom3D users do get access to in v25, which you had chosen to ignore. Users or prospective users can decide for themselves which, if any of those items they will find useful.

All feedback from customers is valuable - where that feedback over simplifies, or is factually incorrect, it isn't unreasonable to provide additional context for the benefit of others.

Of course you'll have your own views on what items are important to you (and what I think won't change those views).
 

beastro

Senior Member
Expanded snapping for example - no you didn't have this in v24. The 'expanded' refers to adding the behaviour to apply to entities that previously didn't have this, to make the design process smoother and quicker. A feature that people liked has been implemented across more of the software.
Hi David,

Lots of good updates in the new version, but expanded snapping is a bit of a disappointment. To start with, I consider it more of a bug fix than a new feature because it should have been there for all functions when it was introduced for drawing tools. Unfortunately, dimensioning and select still does not snap to centre points, which is a real bummer IMO.
 

Ken226

Alibre Super User
The existence of Atom seems to be a little of a pain in the butt.

Buying something with deliberately neutered features is kinda like buying a phone and finding out you have to pay extra to enable its wi-fi hotspot. I doubt this is the first time someone has purchased Atom then hopped on the forum and expressed some discontent. I know some of you would argue that the buyer should have done his homework before buying, and while that is true, it's also irrelevant. What people should do in a perfect world isn't what happens here in our imperfect one.
What actually happens is that people watch youtube videos on "Alibre", then go to the website and buy "Alibre", only to find many of the tools shown in the youtube video don't exist. Then they hop on the forum to vent 150$ worth of frustration.

Not to mention the fact that the most knowledgable users in the best position to give advice are using Alibre Design and will further frustrate the new Atom user by recommending actions that Atom is incapable of.

A modular tier system might be more palatable, and perhaps easier for Alibre since there would only be one version of each module.

Something like:

Alibre Design Expert = Modeling, Drawing, Sheetmetal, Rendering, Global Parameters (The Works).
Alibre Design Pro = Modeling, Drawing, Sheetmetal or perhaps, Modeling, Drawing and Rendering.
Alibre Design Standard = Modeling and Drawing
Alibre Design Basic = Modeling

Or, some version of the above with pricing to reflect the current value of each included module.

Just a random thought.
 
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simonb65

Alibre Super User
@Ken226 , the reality is that no matter how you spilt or reduce functionality in an application to create a tier system, there will always be some users that have an overlap into the next tier but don't use the features often enough, that they don't want to pay for the next level. Then they moan (rightly or wrongly), that for them there are 'core' features missing from their version.

I personally think the price point between Atom3D, Pro and Expert is not reflective of the functional differences. i.e. Expert is 8 times the price of Atom3D. Does it have 8 times the features, probably not? Well it has Sheetmetal and a Keyshot for CAD and a few extra modelling functions ... but 8 times the price?

I think Atom3D is a reasonably priced application for what you get in the CAD world. Do I think that Expert is worth 8 times the value ... compared to the competition it's great value. Compared to Atom3D ... maybe not so much!

People, please go check out the feature list and tell me why you wouldn't use Alibre Pro over Atom3D.
 
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