CAD Software Alibre versions?

[Sandy H.]

I tried Alibre way-way back in the day (thinking it was mid-90's, but could have been close to 2000). I only knew 2D AutoCAD and Alibre was 'impossible' and 'useless'. Yes, I was an AutoCAD 2D guy and knew that 3D would never take off, much less parametric modelling. . .

Fast forward a couple of decades and I only use AutoCAD for electrical drawings (AutoCAD Electrical is pretty sweet, though. . . ). I use Inventor and Catia with a little bit of Solidworks (1 week training, but company shifted right after training, so literally only used it for a few weeks).

Given the Black Friday sales and the fact that all of the above software is owned by my day job, I'm debating on buying a version of Alibre so I can own (not rent) my own software for personal use. I have software I use for my laser, but I don't own 3D modelling software myself. I have 2.5 axis CNC software (i.e. VCarve) for my router. I also own a 3D printer.

I was curious about the differences in the versions of Alibre. In my opinion, Autodesk Inventor and Fusion360 are 1000% different. Maybe its just the user interface, but I tried Fusion360 and don't like it. I was curious if the user interface for Atom ($99) and Expert ($1199) were the same, just with reduced options for the cheap version. Basically, if I am going to commit to learning a new user interface, I don't want to learn Atom if I move to another version in the future. Today, I don't need all of the features of Expert for sure, but at the end of the day, I am moving toward needing a full featured 3D CAD system in the next few years.

Just curious for those who have used both Atom and the more full packages.

Thanks for any insights you can provide.

Sandy.

 

[Andrew Brown]

The Atom and the Expert interfaces are very similar. Atom has a significantly reduced feature set though. I feel that Alibre is a lot closer to SolidWorks rather than Inventor or Fusion. Any parametric solid modeling tool will inherently be different than AutoCAD though. I do have Alibre Expert and would have a hard time with the limited assembly capability of Atom.

 

[Sandy H.]

Agreed on the AutoCAD vs Parametric tool - I was poking fun at myself for the delusion I had on the 'perfection' of 2D AutoCAD vs the 'ridiculous' concept of 3D parametric being anything more than a fad. . . Glad I'm not a WallStreet investment guru. . .boy how times change.

I am most comfortable with the Inventor workflow/UI, second most comfortable with the Solidworks workflow/UI and I have to fumble around in Catia in assemblies but can do individual parts fine (possibly the configuration we have) but their UI is horrible, IMO.

Would you say that Alibre Expert is generally stable and you don't have to do a ton of workarounds for stuff you could easily do in Inventor or Solidworks?

I purchased CorelCAD for 2D design work (based on ARES 'copy' of AutoCAD methodology) as it was affordable but it has a handful of things that are simple in AutoCAD, but aren't implemented well. It crashes more than any other program I own as well. . . but, since I came from 90's AutoCAD originally, I know how to save often. . . It works fine for 2D laser stuff (way better than non-CAD solutions I tried), but I do think I need to move to 3D parametric at home too, as that's how I think now, compared to the AutoCAD 2D mentality.

FYI, I know that I haven't given any real goals as to my use case, as it isn't really set in stone. Having said that, functional assembly is an absolute need. Renderings might be important, but I'd rather take a picture of a finished 'whatever' than make a rendering. Some BOM capability could be nice, but not a catastrophe if it isn't some super modern ERP whatnot. I do want to be able to design something top-down or bottom-up, make readable 2D drawings, generate cut files for the laser and generate meshes for the 3D printer and/or the 2.5 axis CNC. FEA and dynamic modelling could be fun for a project or two, but I imagine if something got that involved, I'd just stay late at work and use the tools I've learned for those tasks.

Thanks for your post. Sounds like Atom is out, but I may need to research 'professional' more and likely 'workshop' is out as it is Atom based as well.

Best Regards,

Sandy.