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Using Alibre in a small design office
- Thread starter moyesboy
- Start date
Using Alibre in a small office
Moyesboy,
We are a small Engineering Design firm with three seats of Alibre. We are for the most part very well satisfied. If you would like to correspond further on this you can contact me at jim@reynoldsddc.com.
Moyesboy,
We are a small Engineering Design firm with three seats of Alibre. We are for the most part very well satisfied. If you would like to correspond further on this you can contact me at jim@reynoldsddc.com.
I'm finally convincing one of the depts at work to get a bundle of Alibre Design, so we will be setting up a small office for AD (if we do purchase).
Since it is always better to set the rules before implementation we will be deciding how to set up the file sharing et. al. I would be interested in sharing thoughts with anyone that is going through the same thing.
More later.
Regards,
You have a few basic options as far as I know:
:arrow: If both machines are permanently networked and will always be connected (and logged into AD), you can work in repositories and just share them between machines (I would suggest putting the repositories on some drive that is backed up regularly).
:arrow: If both machines will always have an internet connection, you can purchase/subscribe to an online repository from Alibre - this will eliminate the need to have all machines logged into AD to have access to all of the repositories.
:arrow: You can do what I do (I do most of my work on a laptop and generally am not logged in to AD to share repositories and often don't have an internet connection) which is work in the file system on a shared network drive (or Windows briefcase when on the road to make syncronizing easy) - you just have to be a little careful that two users aren't trying to edit the same file at the same time (I think you can actually do the edit, but you may get some surprising results the next time you open the file). You also lose the revision tracking that the repository provides.
That's about it until Alibre implements an intranet repository (which would make setting something like this up much cleaner).
Re:
Yes, I have noticed this too. Which is going to make me reluctant to recommend this route for the small office set up. I am curious as to why the downloads are slow with the Alibre server repository (it is not on my end as I have a high speed conection).
cclark440 said:The online repository can slow down load times significantly.
Yes, I have noticed this too. Which is going to make me reluctant to recommend this route for the small office set up. I am curious as to why the downloads are slow with the Alibre server repository (it is not on my end as I have a high speed conection).
I found that I HAVE to use the repository system to get adequate performance from Alibre. The performance, particularly with assembly drawings (not so much models) is slowed down if you use the WFS.
I found that there are shorcomings in the WFS that I cannot tolerate (on top of the slow performance). I have raised these problems with Alibre support.
Now that I am happy using Alibre with the repository I expected that it was just a simple case of the creator enabling sharing with the repositories that are on our network and then our other users would be able to read and write to them VIA OUR NETWORK. I'm not contemplating an intranet either.
Now it seems (though I have yet to confirm this because I only activated one account and didn't load Alibre on two machines in our office yet) that to access our files we have to be logged into the AD server and the files will actually travel over the internet.
We cannot be relying on internet access to work within our company. I don't think we can get internet access realiably enough for that. No way will the MD (CEO) agree to that.
Just to make a point. Last year in our area, just south of Manchester UK (not the backwoods, we are in a large town. Half the population of UK is within 1.5 hours drive of here). There was a little problem with a fire in an access tunnel under a road. This took the whole areas telephones out. most of the mobiles (cellulars) didn't work. All the cashpoints stopped working for 2 days. Many businesses didn't get phone or internet for 2.5 weeks.
That was a good 2.5 weeks to catch up on some design work!
Thats the UK, we have a pretty good infrastructure.
So sharing our own copyright design data would be crippled if Alibre were, for some reason, not there, or we don't pay the annual maintenance fee, or as happens at least once a month in my experience, the internet link is down.
...unless we use the WFS. But then, in my opinion, I am already crippled.
Trying to implement Alibre in a manner that will suit our office is proving to be a real emotional roller coaster ride so far.
Hence this post.
You guys must have been through this already!
On the plus side, Alibre support is very very good!
bhershberger
Member
Are there any new ideas on this topic? We may get a new cad guy so will need some sort of two person network.
Re:
Hit this link and then hit the link in the top post.
http://www.alibre.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2437&highlight=
It is too expensive for me as an individual (it requires some customer code to be written by Alibre). But it may be right for your business.
bhershberger said:Are there any new ideas on this topic? We may get a new cad guy so will need some sort of two person network.
Hit this link and then hit the link in the top post.
http://www.alibre.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2437&highlight=
It is too expensive for me as an individual (it requires some customer code to be written by Alibre). But it may be right for your business.