Alibre CAD PE opine?

Alibre has a hobbyist version of their 3D solid modeling CAD software that looks to be pretty decent for $199. My key wants:

• rapid prototyping. If it takes me 7hrs to draw something like a brake bracket or upright I'm going to just use a napkin.
• Act as a document for all the things I make or have made so I can do it twice. I want to convert all my 2D stuff by import.
• visualizing motion and interference
• export a machine shop can use when it is something I lack the skill or tools for
• good help/documentation/support so I can figure out how to do things

They have a free trial but the key process didn't work for me. While I wait for a response from their rep... Has anyone used any of their stuff who can comment?

I don't know if it has those capabilities, but if you are a student and are prepared to present proof of such to Autodesk, if necessary, they will give you a free 1 year student license of just about every piece of software they make. only difference between the student version and the commercially available version is the fact that the student version has a banner at the top saying that it's a student version

In reply to Slyp_Dawg:

I am not a student - and I really cannot justify buying their stuff for hobby projects even if I goad a student into buying it for me. What do I do if in a year I have come to depend on it? Find another student... or pony up $3995. Ouch.

The Alibre stuff looks to be a pretty good baby brother of SolidWorks with 70% of the features at 10% of the price.

I'm looking for someone with some seat time to say if it is a buggy wreck, or is hard to learn, difficult to do things with, etc. AFAIK they are the only game in town in my price range for real parametric 3D modeling so it's likely this or a napkin (sometimes oragami to test interference).

hm... I've never worked with it, I'd suggest Punch! ViaCAD but the last time I tried using that, it was a bit of a pain to do anything with. all I really have experience with is Autodesk products, EMachineShop (pretty much a 2D CAD adapted to 3D... free and works great as a converter or to get stuff made as long as its fairly simple, but if you're trying to make something with any degree of complexity, sketchup may serve you better...

For posterity:

I picked up ViaCAD Punch! 2D/3D version 8 for $83 with a coupon. Big plus is it is OS-X native so I can work in a unix environment. I did 2 tutorials and then just whipped up a nice 3D model of the motor mount I need to make. (not exactly rocket science but...). It hasn't crashed yet and imported a 2D DXF of my E36 M3 to Wilwood caliper brackets just fine. Pretty easy to do things so far. Productivity within 60 minutes of install time is good.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Alibre has a hobbyist version of their 3D solid modeling CAD software that looks to be pretty decent for $199. My key wants: - rapid prototyping. If it takes me 7hrs to draw something like a brake bracket or upright I'm going to just use a napkin. - Act as a document for all the things I make or have made so I can do it twice. I want to convert all my 2D stuff by import. - visualizing motion and interference - export a machine shop can use when it is something I lack the skill or tools for - good help/documentation/support so I can figure out how to do things They have a free trial but the key process didn't work for me. While I wait for a response from their rep... Has anyone used any of their stuff who can comment?

No prior CAD experience, here. I tried using it, and found the learning curve to be too steep to be worth the effort. I went back to using a sketch pad and photoshop to plan what to do on my project. If you are already experienced with CAD, YMMV

Thanks for the offer. I may take you up on it after I finish the car I'm building. (Good to know for later on...)

http://www.123dapp.com/ ?

I designed a number of the DIYAutoTune.com products in Alibre Design Expert. Here's my thoughts on it. Overall, if you haven't used a parametric modeler before, the learning curve can be a bit steep. I had previously used Pro-E in college, years ago, and picking up Alibre wasn't too bad.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Alibre has a hobbyist version of their 3D solid modeling CAD software that looks to be pretty decent for $199. My key wants: rapid prototyping. If it takes me 7hrs to draw something like a brake bracket or upright I'm going to just use a napkin.

Works pretty well for that. You can export STL files that most rapid prototyping shops can feed to a 3D printer.

Act as a document for all the things I make or have made so I can do it twice. I want to convert all my 2D stuff by import.

I've managed to get it to import DXF files OK - editing them can be a bit of a challenge as they probably won't edit like the CAD program you used to design them. That takes a bit of doing.

- visualizing motion and interference

It has a pretty cool assembly section that lets you put together a virtual model and move parts around. It doesn't seem to do detailed interference checks when items are free to move - at least, I haven't tried it, and I'm not sure it can be done in the personal version. The Expert version I have has some more sophisticated motion analysis.