[rhadiem]

I had once been thinking about Inventor, but now I'm leaning towards Alibre (Expert), and would like your thoughts.

The majority of the work I do will end up being cut on a CNC router.

Custom Electric guitars and similar 3D work

Custom furniture designs with a parts library of designs I can reuse and tweak. (desks, tables, chests, etc)

Basic signage in 3D

3D models out of foam/etc

Various machinery out of wood/aluminum/etc, designing my own CNC, etc. (ideally with simulation)

Will Alibre work with these things very well? I realize it's probably overkill for signage but figured I'd list that for some basic stuff.

What CAM solution do you suggest to acomplish these things, at a reasonable price?

Thanks,

John

[ger21]

For most flat parts, it's far quicker to draw them in 2D, rather than 3D. At least for me, anyway.

For CAM, look at Vectric's V-Carve pro.

For 3D, either Vectric's Cut3D, or MeshCAM.

[Caprirs]

I have Alibre Pro and am very happy with it. For working with assemblies of parts, it is tough to beat price-wise. Alibre provides 80-90% of Solidworks capabilities for 10% of the cost.

For projects like furniture, Alibre would work well allowing you to assemble things virutally before building. For example, you could have a library of table legs and swap them on screen to see which would look best. Alibre also has a photo rendering package to create realistic images before building.

For 3D signs, Vectric seems to be the best. I have Vectric's PhotoVCarve that I have used to make lithopanes. Very simple to use and excellent results.

[Farmers Machine]

I am new to Alibre and starting to use it more as my go to drawing program. Have been using Gibbs Cam since 2001 just for flat 2D drawings. So far with some help, It has done very well for me. Just paid maintence the other day and called into Alibre for live tech support. That is what really sold me that this was good software and a very good company to do business with. They are very patience with you and do not make fun of your shortcommings.

As for building your own CNC check out CAM SOFT forum in motion control. I have a retrofit CNC conversion on a large oxy fuel torch with CAM SOFT PRO. being a machinist by trade. this is extremely good CNC system.

Good luck
The Farmer

[dmerrll]

I have been using Alibre since 2006 maybe 2005?
They are not consistent.
I use Alibre Expert and AlibreCam 2.0 expert.
My drawings and programs have compatibility issues with drawing created in prior versions of Alibre including seperate versions of Alibre 2011 downloaded at different times. I have paid support with Alibre and I had paid Maint on alibreCam for last 3 years though recently declined to pay more as the support is lacking expertise in the program. They have never been able to answer a question without going back to Mecsoft and waiting for a reply then contacting me and back and forth, back and forth. I have suggested that they buy a couple of machines and actually use the programs and see how they work and generate code for the last couple of years. they saw no wisdom in that approach though James in support thought last year that that would be a good idea.
This is a post a made in Alibre forum today. So I can no longer recommend this program though the people at Alibre are nice, they call back, they are interested in your experience als that won't make chips and I cannot earn a living any longer with Alibre unless something is repaired or identified.

Well Lost another Day!#$@%%#$!%
Alibre 2011 with AlibreCam 2.0 does not read machining regions created prior to ver 13 (Alibre2011 downloaded in Oct 2010) must reselect most machining regions again . Sometimes hole regions will be okay sometimes pocket regions will be okay, never will Hor rgh fin or planar routines stay selected. So today I need to remake parts with new fixture routine so I must change my offsets. After recreating all Mops program crashes after an exception thrown. details of exception refer to repository which I do not use. The unfortunate thing is that now the file is unreadable again referring to repository.
So instead of just losing a day I have to recreate the drawing completely. Alex, with Alibre support, says they cannot figure it out though they have the same problem opening the files.
Really, really unhappy with my experience with Alibre and their purported darned upgrades. I think instead of issuing new programs they should try to perfect the one we have.
Bottom line right now Alibre SUCKS!!!!!!!
David coding by hand in Hillsborough North Carolina

[scudzuki]

Dave,
Sorry to hear you had to recreate the entire drawing. Didn't you have a backup of the file to restore? With external hard drives available for well under $100, no one should be without some backup system in place.

I too have noticed regions missing from MOPS when a file created in AD12 is opened in AD2011. Seems to me I had similar problems when CAM 2.0 came out. Fortunately I name my regions when I create them in anticipation of rework. It's a little more work up front but it pays off in the long run. Not much help now I suppose.


Joe

[dmerrll]

Hey Joe. Yes I have backups. This time my auto back up backed up the error.
So I had to revert to year old design using 6061 t6 instead of the new design reflecting use of 7075. I had been able to marginalize some of the webs in my design with stronger material. The problems are sometimes the backup retrieves the Mops sometimes not. When the Mops are there the regions are not and have to be reselected. Since the naming protocol does not follow Alibre's in a complex drawing with many containments it is tough reselecting sketchs carefully named with only a "region 123..." as a guidepost. Since I make a lot of parts with an over 50 year old brain region naming following Alibre's design tree convention would certainly be beneficial.

Have not needed my Auto save program in so long I had almost forgotten where the recovered files are hidden from alibre and Microsoft!
David in Hillsborough
Spending Sunday Counting crashes

[dmerrll]

Well it is now Sunday afternoon......
I will not be selling a $6000 part to a customer tomorrow.
Thankyou Alibre

The only things I have done to cause all of this grief is install, last week, the latest and greatest version of Alibre 2011
Alibre Design Version:[ PRODUCTVERSION 13,0,0,13060 ] 32-bit

ACISUtils.dll[Version:13, 0, 0, 13045]
DXUtils.dll[Version:13, 0, 0, 13045]
DCMUtils.dll[Version:13, 0, 0, 13045]
DWGUtils.dll[Version:13, 0, 0, 13045]
ROSEUtils.dll[Version:13, 0, 0, 13045]
PDFPublishUtils.dll[Version:13, 0, 0, 13045]
Along with AlibreCam Product Version: 2,0,0,48
I do not change hardware and I have the same problems, to many to list, on both computers

David in Hillsborough
good luck

[hpprose]

I have Alibre Pro and am very happy with it. For working with assemblies of parts, it is tough to beat price-wise. Alibre provides 80-90% of Solidworks capabilities for 10% of the cost.

For projects like furniture, Alibre would work well allowing you to assemble things virutally before building. For example, you could have a library of table legs and swap them on screen to see which would look best. Alibre also has a photo rendering package to create realistic images before building.

I know this is a little old, but I agree with the statement above