3D packages gain global appeal

An Alibre product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Dec 9, 2003

Alibre has updated and enhanced its professional 3D CAD applications Alibre Design and Alibre Design Professional.

Alibre has updated and enhanced its professional 3D CAD applications Alibre Design and Alibre Design Professional.

Alibre Design provides parametric solid modelling for mechanical design and manufacturing at one-tenth the cost of comparable products.

Further pushing the industry price-performance point, the price of Alibre Design is being reduced by $100 to $595 in the USA and Canada.

Alibre Design Professional, an extended version that includes advanced addons such as finite element analysis and photorealistic rendering, remains priced at $995 in the USA and Canada.

New and enhanced features in Alibre Design 7.0 include: Boolean operations for the design of moulds and dies; access to standard Windows file system for data storage; enhanced assembly modelling with subassembly constraint "articulation"; "light drawings" for faster drawing load and view creation; improved support for ISO and DIN drawing standards; enhanced productivity for detailing drawings; increased print options, including support for multiple drawing sheets; and the ability to export designs and drawings as images in formats such as jpeg, bmp, gif etc.

Alibre Design Professional adds these advanced features: an expanded set of supported closed corner conditions in sheet metal design; easier-to-use photorealistic rendering, including support for exploded views; an improved interface for managing sharing and security of repository data; the ability to save and revert repository to snapshot, easily archive and transfer data; and ModelPress Publisher for compressing and distributing 3D models for viewing with the free ModelPress Viewer.

"With this latest release Alibre Design continues to gain on much more expensive CAD applications such as SolidWorks and Inventor", said Marc Meadows, owner of Meadows Analysis and Design.

"As a consultant offering design and analysis services, I know the addition of Booleans and the 2D drawing enhancements will be well received".

Alibre Design 7.0 also supports a new localisation interface which allows the software to be translated into any language without a recompile or build by Alibre.

"We are particularly excited about the new localisation interface", said Christian Battlogg, principal of Battlogg Design, and Alibre partner based in Thuringen, Austria.

"Alibre Design is already the best value on the market for 3D solid modelling and now, with German-language support, the product will rapidly penetrate the large German, Austrian and Swiss markets for mechanical design".

"Alibre Design 7.0 adds improved support for ISO and DIN drawing standards, this is key for markets outside of the USA", said Michael Berglund of Emcad based in Sweden.

"With the new language translation interface, integrated collaboration and data sharing, Alibre Design 7.0 has truly become a global product".

"With Alibre Design 7.0, not only did we add many new capabilities, we dropped the base price to $595 making the best deal on the market even better", said J Paul Grayson, Alibre President and CEO.

"We're also excited about the new localisation interface and expect to see support for major languages, including German, Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish by early next year.

We're experiencing record sales with very little contribution outside of North America, so when these languages start hitting we expect explosive growth".