Resources for Alibre

Starting on a wiki page for this, since it’s being bundled (temporarily with machines sold during the 2019 Black Friday Sale: https://carbide3d.com/blog/2019/black-friday-2019/ ):

this is a commercial 3D CAD app.

The company has a forum: Alibre Forum

It is being featured in a series of magazine articles: Learning CAD with Alibre Atom3D | Model Engineer — those in particular are interesting — went ahead and bought issue #274 — may have to see about getting all the digital back issues since then.

An exercise manual/tutorial is available: https://www.alibre.com/AlibreDownloads/Alibre_Atom3D_Exercise_Manual.pdf

Anyone found anything else?

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I went to the website but it is sparse with info. I saw some videos available on-line but not a lot more info.

Would the people who made the decision to bundle this software @robgrz @Jorge @edwardrford have done and presumably done research and provide us with this information. Does it include a CAM able to export Shapeoko GCode for example?

Will Carbide 3D sell and support this software in the future?

No CAM in the software — export a DXF, import into Carbide Create.

OK so forget about using as a replacement for F360 with a strong CAM that provides adaptive clearing and many fancy toolpaths.

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Also, Windows only for those that are looking for a tool for Mac.

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Good point. I’m adding that and the system requirements:

  • Windows 64-bit, 7 or later
  • 4+GB RAM
  • Video card compatible with DirectX 9
  • Internet Access

There some systemic CAM options for Alibre:

Anyone in a position to evaluate them?

Also found a spreadsheet option:

http://www.wizotools.com/

I find the relationship with magazines quite interesting (I’ve an awful fondness for the perceived value of getting a full software package with a magazine).

In addition to Model Engineers Workshop there was some sort of bundling with Home Shop Machinist — this thread is quite interesting and well worth reading:

https://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/forum/general/39152-alibre-cad-program

I thought this was a brilliant observation:

When you think that 20 or 30 years ago a cad system with a fraction of what Alibre can do cost as much as $100,000 plus the cost of a dedicated computer, I don’t mean a PC but a mini computer ($20,000 to $100,000 more)

I think it’s actually quite funny. 40 years ago (almost exactly), I took my first computer course in college. FORTRAN IV. Punchcards. A LOT of punchcards. Hundreds of punchcards to calculate relatively simple things. The computer took up the entire basement of the university computer science building, (and the university admin had either two or three floors of the building. My dad bought me a Texas instrument calculator for a bit over $100 in 1976. It was a four function calculator. Not even a single memory, just the four basic functions of addition,subtraction, multiplication and division. According to inflation calculator, it would be $2500 in today’s money.

Just amazing what I’ve seen in 61;years

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We don’t have time for a dead end . . . even if it is a really good deal.
I am willing to pay for “future-proofing” as time becomes shorter than money.

Alibre has been around for quite a while, and apparently the reversion to the original name from the Geomagic/Cubify rebranding signifies the return of the original team, so presumably a good bit of dedication to the product/brand.

For my part, I spent much of the weekend doing tutorials and it seems like a very workable tool, and I certainly appreciate that it’s a perpetual license which one installs on one’s own machine.

Support for the Traceparts library:

This seems older, but possibly still useful?

http://sccg.sk/~kg/bohdal/subory/AlibreDesign/Modeling_Fundamentals.pdf

Here’s a tech note which seemed worth mentioning:

https://support.alibre.com/support/solutions/articles/27000053962-best-practices-in-alibre-products

Anyone still using this?

Article on it:

Note that MeshCAM is now available bundled w/ Atom 3D as “Workshop”:

which is now bundled w/ the Nomad.

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A new development is documentation for creating add-ons for Alibre:

including an example add-on:

as discussed at:

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