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CAD - Engineering - Technical > Alibre Design

Jim Mahoney
Senior Heliman
Location: San Jose, CA U.S.A.

Hello All,

You might want to check out Alibre Design, a very professional system with a great Video Traing Series. This is a solid modeling program, generate the solid model and then press a button to generate the 2-D and Isometric views!

Worth a Look! AND there is an example of a complete model helicopter!!!!!!!!!

http://www.alibre.com/

Happy Flying,
Cherokee Jim Mahoney

07-11-2004 Over year old.

Hockeytown
Veteran
Location: Pontiac, Mi. U.S.A.

FYIF...............

This would be a nice system for someone to use at home, but it is FAR from Production Level design.

The model helicopter shown is a NEXUS, which was on the market several years before Alibre was ever created, so as far as I am concerned, it isn't a viable representation of a REAL DESIGN. It is a simplified, ballpark mockup to show a finished product.

Again, for home use, it should be fine, but this isn't a product anyone would want to use in an acutal company.

I have been selling SolidWorks for 9 years and we have yet to lose a deal where someone is considering Alibre even thought we are more expensive.

Thanks,

Darin[color=red]
Hockeytown[/color]

07-11-2004 Over year old.

Jim Mahoney
Senior Heliman
Location: San Jose, CA U.S.A.

Hello,

A lot of people and small companies do use Alibre Design and love it. If you are a solid Works Salesman then you are never going to admit anything good about Alibre.

Alibre is easy to learn, has plenty of power, has an online design system where factory experts can help out interactively while you work, AND most important is where I see the future developments going!

A higher price never automaticly means better performance, or else everyone would be using Auto Cad

.

Alibre has put a lot of effort into interactive training techniques and a very good program of improving their product.

If you like Solid Works then keep it, will you don't have any choice in the mater if you want to keep your job, but hey with your experience there might be a job opening over at Alibre!

I will keep using and loving Alibre Design, I consider it to have the best Price/Performance Ratio for my dollars, the less money that I have to spend on a CAD system to get the job done the greater my Profit Margin!!! And Profit Margin is where its all at!

I spend a lot of my time doing PC Board Design and Layout and I use Protel DXP, and that is an expensive program, but in this case it gives me what I need and I consider it money well spent.

I forgot to say that I am using Alibre Design Pro, with Mold making and Sheet Metal Functions.

Just wat areas do you think Solid Works is better than Alibre? Give us a list and I will get an Alibre Engineer to address them, Hey if in fact there are areas where Solid Works is better then Alibre will work to address the issues and I will end up with an even better product for My Money.

Happy Flying,
Cherokee Jim Mahoney

07-12-2004 Over year old.

Hockeytown
Veteran
Location: Pontiac, Mi. U.S.A.

Use what you like...........

I'm not going to waste my breath on what Alibre already knows.

They had a competition a year ago that if you could call Alibre and tell them anything SolidWorks could do, that if they couldn't do it, you won $1000.

I had several of my customers, armed with a list of approx. 20 items that SolidWorks could do and Alibre couldn't do, and when they called Alibre, the response was "that function doesn't qualify because our software doesn't have that capability".

WASN'T THAT THE ENTIRE REASON FOR THE CONTEST!!??

After that, I just went on with my day, supporting my 350,000 customers.

Like I said in my first post, if you're doing simple design at home, or I'll even add, a simple product, go for it with Alibre. When I had an eval of it, and after 15 minutes I poked over a dozen holes in it that I stopped wasting my time. Things like simple fillets that it couldn't make to a lack of file associativity and very clunky assembly tools.

I don't want to get into a 'mine is better than yours' arguement here. All I am saying is that I have found fundamental issues with the software because it isn't mature......similar to the things that SolidWorks had issues with back in 1997. But we are 7 years further along. Alibre WILL mature, but they need to have enough market share to stay afloat while they are developing.

The problem with a price point of $495 to $995 is that you reach a point that it is almost impossible to be profitable. Nobody sells and supports Alibre because you can't live on the margins of such a product......that's why they have the remote support that they do.

SolidWorks has been $3995 since day 1. We are single handedly putting companies like ProE out of business because they got fat on $20,000 plus a seat. When then tried to compete with us, they slit their own wrists. They have now been losing $30,000,000 a quarter for 2.5 YEARS now.

At our price point, the 20 employees of my company are living very comfortably, as are the employees of the other 250 SolidWorks resellers in the world.

Maybe Alibre will gain enough marketshare to remain competitive, but it is a race against time. You say that "many" companies are using it and liking it......that's great.......but Alibre certainly isn't taking any of my customers............it's gotta be AutoCAD users

OK, I know I said that I wasn't going to waste my breath on Alibre..........................But wasting my breath on RunRyder is a TOTALLY different story

I wish you the best!!

And by the way, I am NOT a salesman, I am a Technical Engineer.............I just sound like one sometimes

Take care!!!

Darin[color=red]
Hockeytown[/color]

07-12-2004 Over year old.

Jim Mahoney
Senior Heliman
Location: San Jose, CA U.S.A.

Hello Hockytown,

"I have been selling SolidWorks for 9 years "

This is why I thought you were a Salesman!

I am not putting your product or company down at all. For most of the folks in this forum Alibre is a reachable product cost wise while Solid Works at $3995 may not be.

Alibre has enough feature that one will not feel bad at all in buying it, check out Alibre's examples to see. The other point is that doing any of these examples using any CAD package on the market today is still a lot of work and will take the user an investment of time to learn, still need to know basic and advanced drafting techniques.

All of the CAD products on the market, mechanical or PCB, require the end user to pick one that suits their purpose, one that they have confidance will evolve in the future, and learn it well to get the most out of it.

CAD and Solid Modeling products are like helicopters, we are lucky enough to have a number of good products to choose from that can do a good job for us, but like helicopters the user that puts in the most practice and becomes good will do well no matter what heli/CAD product they use! Curtis could give me his helicopter and fly my century Hawk and fly circles around me all day long with his eyes closed.

Have a good one and Happy Flying,
Cherokee Jim Mahoney

07-12-2004 Over year old.

Jim Mahoney
Senior Heliman
Location: San Jose, CA U.S.A.

Hello again,

Do you mind listing the 20 things that Alibre could not do? I would like to see what I am missing and I want to challenge Alibre about them.

No hurry, I will be in France for the next two weeks.

Happy Flying,
Cherokee Jim Mahoney

07-12-2004 Over year old.

Hockeytown
Veteran
Location: Pontiac, Mi. U.S.A.

You're right about 'piloting' a CAD system.....

A good user can make the hardest systems look easy.........sometimes

Any, about Alibre's contest.......that was over a year ago so I'm going to have to get into my email archives to take a look.

Some of them were Sheet Metal items, which at the time they had NO sheetmetal to speak of. This is one of the things they said "We don't have Sheetmetal so that doesn't qualify" to my customer. That shocked us because we thought that was the whole point of the contest. Sheetmetal is CORE functionality to SolidWorks.

As for assemblies, we submitted Dynamic assembly motion, Sub Assembly motion and Assembly Motion with Collision detection.

For some reason, none of these 'qualified'.

After that, Alibre, as a company, lost all credibility with me and alot of people that I know called them.

That isn't the way to do business.

Anyway, Autodesk is a piss poor run company and plenty of users are getting their jobs done with their products...............but then again, there are people successfully flying the Nexus too!!

Have a good and safe trip!!!

Thanks,

Darin[color=red]
Hockeytown[/color]

07-16-2004 Over year old.

Havoc
Key Veteran
Location: Ky.

You mention autodesk, the only thing I don't like about Autodesk is that they try to get you to subscribe to their software. You don't buy a release. At one time there would be a release and they would justify why you needed it and then you buy it. Now you buy it and they want you to spend $1000 per year to maintain it. It ends up being that you really are just throwing money into the wind for what amounts to bug fixes because chances are the next installment isn't going to have anything in it geared to the type of work you are doing. If it does, it is more awkward to do it their way than your way and you won't use the feature anyway. Plus if you do upgrade you need to then buy the upgrades for all the add-ons. So we just stopped "upgrading" because we were content with what it is doing for us. If they do have a major advancement then they package that as a whole new software package and won't be covered in the subscription anyway. I doubt that is just an Autodesk tactic but this subscription thing is lame. I remember a time when each upgrade was "wow look what it does now". Now finding the benefits of each upgrade is like finding waldo. Ok found him but who cares.

08-05-2004 Over year old.

uglyduck
Heliman
Location: North of Toronto

Solid Works is te way to go.....no question, specially for heli parts. I have been running it for four yearsnow and for 98% of manufacturing chores it is hard to beat. The only place it falls short is in surfacing, and that is to ProE, a much more expensive package.

08-06-2004 Over year old.

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CAD - Engineering - Technical > Alibre Design

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