Version 24

Features of the v24 release.
Shipped December 6, 2021

Major Features (7)

Performance, Enhancements & Bug Fixes (57)

Performance

Significant Improvements for Editing Parts in Context of an Assembly

Many enhancements together represent significant performance improvements on a wide variety of actions typically seen while editing parts in the context of an assembly, such as entering sketch mode or modifying values of features.

Very Significant Improvements in Large Sketch Performance 

Very significant performance improvements have been made when doing almost any interaction within a sketch that has a large number of figures and/or constraints. This includes things like activating tools, dragging figures, editing sketch dimensions, trimming, and placing additional constraints. Sketching best practices should still be used.

Hover Performance on Heavily Split Faces

Hovering the mouse over edges / faces of a heavily split face (e.g. a face with 400 holes in it) could result in very slow interaction. This was achieved by highlighting only peripheral edges if the face has a large number of edges and by highlighting the bounding box of the body if the selected state is Import File and there are a large number of topologies.

Save Performance When Many Parts Added Via the API

API operations in GUI mode could become very slow when adding many parts to an assembly in some workflows. Test cases now show an improvement from 8:20 (v23) down to 43 seconds (v24).

Projecting Assemblies with many Patterns

Assemblies with many patterns could cause significant delays during drawing projection. Test cases now show an improvement from 7 minutes (v23) down to 25 seconds (v24).

Editing or Suppressing Subassemblies Could Take a Long While in Some Cases

Some models would suffer from very long response times when "Edit Here", suppressing, or unsuppressing a subassembly.

Saving Imported Parts that were Scaled

Some scenarios could cause scaled parts to be unnecessarily refaceted. Saving might be adversely and significantly impacted. 

Updating Topology Status Triggers Less Often

In some cases dragging a part in an assembly would trigger a topology update unnecessarily.

Draft Angle Extrusions Could Cause Significant Delay with Very Complex Sketches

If an assembly contained a draft angle extrusion with many, many figures, significant assembly-level slowdowns, especially during open, could occur.

View Tab Functions Would be Slow on Parts with Many Faces and/or Edges

Things like toggling reference geometry, toggling the view cube, changing render styles, etc. could take several seconds on some models.

Improved File Import Speed Especially on Computers with Slow File Storage

Optimizations have been made to remove certain temporary files from being written to the hard drive and then retrieved, instead handling this data transfer directly in memory.

General Enhancements

File Incrementation on Data/Model change only

Previously all saves resulted in the internal version of a part / assy changing. This meant that all downstream files would need to be updated. There was no distinction between data changes and cosmetic changes. That distinction now exists, and saving files with only cosmetic changes will not increment the version, and thus not cause downstream files to require an update unnecessarily.

User Profile Versioning

Sometimes you need to go between versions, but your user profile was upgraded to a later version and the earlier Alibre software didn't know what to do with it. Moving forward multiple versions of the profile are saved and used automatically by the appropriate software version.

Converting Between Reference and Regular Figures in 3D Sketch

Support for this has been added.

Hole Callout Count "x" vs "X" Option

An option now exists to change between an uppercase and lowercase "X" for callouts referencing multiple holes, e.g. "2 x M7x1" or "2 X M7 x 1"

Apply Button for Assembly Constraints

An apply button is now at the bottom of the dialog.

Licensing Dialog Help

Various licensing dialogs and licensing errors now have Help resources available directly from the dialogs.

Updated 2D Hatching Settings for Clarity

Hatching options existed in the 2D settings for section views that did not pertain to section views and rather served as defaults for manual hatching. A new hatching section now exists and verbiage has changed to make this clear.

Save Prompting

If the only change that has occurred after opening a file is updating the references of the file, for example after unpackaging, a save is no longer prompted.

Assembly Bugfixes

Pattern Update Using Equation Editor

Assembly patterns might not refresh correctly if count value is increased from Equation Editor - 'index is outside bounds' error.

Mirror with Other Handed Copy Did not Copy Material Properties

Now all material and workspace related properties are copied to the other handed copy.

Setting a Material While Editing a Part in Assembly

If editing a part with multiple configurations in the context of an assembly, it may not be possible to define a material for all configurations.

Material Library Bugfixes

Material Library IDs

Manual manipulation of the material XML files is possible but if not done carefully can result in duplicate material IDs, which caused unpredictable results. The logic has been hardened to not fail entirely if this occurs.

Clicking Blank Material Favorites

Clicking a blank favorite, perhaps made accidentally, used to cause an error.

Importing Libraries with Duplicate Names but Different Casing

This resulted in unexpected behavior.

Dialog Bugfixes

Assembly Constraint Dialog Responsiveness

Some factors used to lead to having to click the dialog twice.

Set Mirrored Source Configuration Dialog

This dialog used to be unusable on very high resolution displays.

Typing in Search Bar Triggered Hot Keys

Using the Search function no longer triggers hotkeys if hotkeys are set to a single letter.

Paper and Type Settings

Paper & Type" fields were not displayed properly in "Publish to PDF" dialog in drawings and "Print" dialog in Part/Assembly on 4K monitors.

Drawing Bugfixes

Deserialization on Closing a Drawing

Fixed an issue where a part file could become de-serialized when closing a drawing of an assembly which contains that file.

Perpendicular Constraint Over-Inferencing

When sketching some scenarios could happen where many valid perpendicular constraints could be inferred when in fact only one was necessary. This could cause significant performance issues. 

No Wait Cursor when Exploding Symbols

A wait cursor has been added.

Save, Undo, Redo Incorrectly Shown as Active when Editing a BOM from a Drawing

They now show as disabled unless a change has been made.

Commas as Decimal Separators in Default View Scale

Commas as decimal separators were not honored in "Edit Sheet Properties - Default View Scale" value in languages for which that is appropriate.

Some Rich Text Would Prevent DXF Export

Additional logic was added to handle cases where language locale APIs had a non-determinant result.

Packaging Drawings with a BOM Incorrectly Enables Save Button

The save button is now no longer incorrectly enabled.

General Bugfixes

Shortcuts for Selection Filters

Shortcuts for Selection Filters using Ctrl as an input might not trigger in some cases.

Exporting Files with Periods in the File Name

Periods in the file name used to prevent the file name from autopopulating the export dialog.

Part Bugfixes

Config Switching May Cause Strange Behavior

Very specific modeling requirements could exist that made switching Configurations result in unexpected behavior.

Angle-distance Chamfer Preview

In some cases the preview for this chamfer type would be incorrect.

Feature Rollbacks when Dialogs Open

Fixed an issue where double-clicking items in the Design Explorer could cause feature rollbacks when dialogs were open.

Some Input Boxes Show as Red

Some input boxes would show inputs as red despite them being valid.

Save Bugfixes

Incorrectly Dirtying Files [Multi]

Certain actions incorrectly caused files to believe they had changes that could be saved, such as entering / exiting Sketch mode. This line items represents a set of many fixes.

Wait Cursor Added for Multi-Part Save Dialog

Saving imported files could cause the assembly save dialog to have many line items which can take a while to populate. There is now a wait cursor.

Sheet Metal Bugfixes

Default Bend Relief Type Buttons

Some dialogs have a button to restore an overridden bend relief type to the default type but the button did not function.

Closed Corner Trimming

Corners may not get trimmed correctly for flanges with inside alignment and closed corners in a Contour Flange.

Sketch Rip Failure in Some Cases

Sketch Rip fails when the part geometry has a default bend radius higher than certain value in Sheet Metal conversion.

Converting Sheet Metal Can Make Bad States

Converting some geometry that is impossible to convert would predictably fail, but would incorrectly leave the software in a bad state.

"Flatten" Feature Autopopulated Dialogs

A "Flatten" feature might populate some dialogs if a Flat Pattern check was executed.

Sketches Using Sheet Metal Parameters May Not Get Updated

Sketches using AD_Thickness may not get updated when AD_Thickness is modified from the Sheet Metal Parameters tool, but would update when changed from the Equation Editor.

Converting to Sheet Metal with Mitre Flanges

Logic has been added to address some geometry specific cases.

Lofted Flanges Causing ACIS Errors

Some cases of lofted flanges causing errors have been addressed.

Mitre Flanges Might Produce Strange Results

Logic has been added to address some geometry specific cases.

Visualization Bugfixes

Faceting May Change Unexpectedly

A logic flaw could cause faceting of some objects to appear coarser than they should.

Cursor-Centric Zoom with View Cube Active

Cursor-centric zoom now works as intended when the View Cube is active..

Visual Artifacts in Section Views

Logic has been added to mitigate visual artifacts when Precise Section Views are active.
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