Alibre Design
Review of Alibre Design Software: system overview, features, price and cost information. Get free demos and compare to similar programs.
Overview
About Alibre Design
Alibre Design Screenshots
Alibre Design Features
Customer Reviews
See why people love Alibre Design
Adrian F.
Verified UserMechanical or Industrial Engineering · Self-Employed
Easy for a CAD noob
Absolutely easy to work with lots good tutorials good forum. Mature software!
- -easy -software is yours no saas -good tutorials -good forum -nice people
- -no real hobbyist license -bad cam there are better choices
Switched From
Unclear license too costly and I don’t like to rent software I like to own it
Why they chose it
"The ease of use. The affordable price and the clean ui"
Thomas G.
Verified UserMachinery · 51-200 employees
The Alibre Design Advantage
Alibre Design Professional is a great, affordable replacement for Inventor and Solidworks. Like myself, most retired individuals can't afford thousands of dollars yearly to maintain a subscription and this package delivers the best for anyone who is retired but still does some development and contract work.
- Great tool, compatibility with step files, has handled everything I needed to do, and is very close to the package I use at work
- Enjoying the new tools added with this update and look forward to new innovations from the development team
- So far, lacks nothing, still experimenting with the pdm (vault) feature, seems like a good setup for alike parts and assemblies, and it gives a form of parametrics to deal with similar part profiles
- The value to me for a complete 3d design solution, is very attractive and , like I said, export capabilities to other design platforms allows me to create E-drawing models for customers to view
- Never had a support issue, basically, hit the ground running
- Assemblies are easy to create, and I can import parts from virtually any source
- I would like to explore more of the toolbox capabilities, see what that is capable of doing
- What a great package
The rendering is very limited, would like to manipulate color palette, light sources, and have realistic texturing capabilities
Switched From
Cost, with equitable capabilities as a retired engineer.
Lee A.
Verified UserRenewables & Environment · Self-Employed
Happy reviewer. Keep up the good fight.
Good generally apart from threads that can be printed. Most other tools offer this out of the box for high end tool. Limited training, but will give you it’s getting better. Thanks
- Simple for basic engineers and high end honest
- Love that it a continuous license
- Lack of structural threads is a massive issues to be able to print on a printer directly
- Lack of support for 5 axis cnc generation
- I have the top end tool which is great but all offers are for other versions to move up to top level
- I paid full price now I feel left out of offers when you give them
- Do not offer options for disabled in terms of keeping in support maintenance when harder to earn money to support keeping it supported
Why they chose it
"Used at previous company so knew it well"
Jeff H.
Verified UserEducation Management · Self-Employed
My experience with Alibre Atom
I've been an Alibre user for about three years now and my overall experience with Alibre Atom has been excellent.
- There are a number of things which make Alibre a great choice
- First is that one purchases a license and does not have to subscribe to a service with a monthly or annual fee
- Second, having Alibre transferable among computers means that I can have it at home and then transfer the license to my laptop for travel, and then back to my home computer again upon my return
- Third, and most important, is Alibre was very easy to learn
- In a very short period of time I was making models which I could then 3D print
- The tutorials are excellent with examples
I'm sure there are some cons to Alibre which could be identified by a more sophisticated user but for my applications I have not found anything which I was not able to do
Switched From
Recommendation from a friend and the ability to try the software before purchase. Also, the price was reasonable for such a powerful product.
Joseph S.
Verified UserAutomotive · Self-Employed
"Old man" continues to enjoy working with Alibre Design
Though I am officially "retired" from my engineering work, I continue to do projects and make increasing use of FDM printing of mechanical parts. My Alibre tools get me quickly and efficiently from model concept through to generation of a .stl file that I can move into slicer software and on to my printer. That is a very rewarding experience.
- I've used Alibre Design Professional for many years (20+) and have seen continuous improvements
- One in particular is just better images, I seldom feel the need to go into photo-rendering software to get a great screenshot that conveys my ideas to others
- It's not so much what I like least, but more of a wish list item, in an area where your obvious competitor, Solidworks, apparently also offers nothing in the following area: It would be great if I could control a sequence of views from a
- csv file, so that I could more readily generate animations of sequences of images, for instance coming out of flight simulation software that I've developed
- Processes like that are currently just under mouse control, where one cannot generate a smooth sequence of viewing angles with smoothly varying zoom, by hand
- I do appreciate that challenges and plain old work that this would place on your software engineers, but I nevertheless point out how valuable it would be if you started moving into this kind of territory
Switched From
Cost. That was probably 25 years ago and I was transitioning to a job position that lacked sufficient budget.
Gregory C.
Verified UserDesign · Self-Employed
Best for small woodworking shop
Excellent. Meets all my 3D design needs. Use case: One-off furniture design and build. Use Alibre to design and iterate ideas then create 2-d shop drawings for construction.
- The combination of price and capabilities, Alibre Design is the best tool to facilitate the flow from rough pencil-sketch, to 3d model to 2d shop drawings
- I appreciate that Alibre Design is not bogged down with "featureitis"
- The Alibre Design developers focus on making the tools great without the burden of marketing fluff
- I also appreciate the "buy once to own" sales model as opposed to the ubiquitous software-as-subscription subscription model
- The UI seems dated and a bit disjointed
- Some of the tools (ESC to de-select) are not as responsive as I would like
Switched From
Fusion 360 is bloated and expensive. It has entire categories for tools that I don't need which adds significant overhead.
Dennis H.
Verified UserIndustrial Automation · 11-50 employees
A Fantastic Everyday Tool
Ease of learning, cost, great community response to problems, and interchangeability with other CAD tools. I use it to conceptualize everything from work to personal projects. I love it!
- The learning curve was very easy
- Cost for Design Expert is very reasonable
- Creating concepts and generating realistic renderings in Keyshot is awesome
- Lack of NURBS and surfacing tools
- I got creative using 3D sketching, lofts and sweeps
- The new fillet functions gives me more flexibility
Switched From
I needed a 3D option. I tried to create 3d concepts which was very difficult.
Why they chose it
"Cost and ease of use during the trial period. I looked at FreeCad which was not as easy to get up to speed. I did not like any of the online (cloud) optiones either."
Jason S.
Verified UserEducation Management · 11-50 employees
When you can't afford SW, get Alibre!
Awesome! I have MeshCam also which I use with my Carbide 3D Nomad cnc machine. Even though I teach SolidWorks to students, I pitch this software to them when they graduate because it is affordable, effective, the support is top notch with same day(sometimes hour) response.
- The support is excellent
- Always available within moments of asking for support help
- That alone is priceless
- I haven't checked the latest version, but it would be very convenient to add bolt circle patterns at the blueprint creation stage instead of modifying the part model
- I use Alibre for making blueprints quite often and this is a constant headache
Switched From
Cost, features and ease of use. Later found out how great the support was and that was an inmeasureable plus.
Jeff E.
Verified UserMusic · Self-Employed
Two thumbs up
Excellent product. Great value. I used this to design parts for fabrication via 3D printer to woodworking and metalworking. I've even made venue models for the charity I support.
- Ease of use
- Excellent customer support
- I used Pro Engineer in my professional career and Alibre has a better user interface, very intuitive and works great
- No complaints
- Other than a few bugs I found four years back that were promptly fixed I haven't found anything to critique
Switched From
I found Alibre when I left industry and deployed it for use in my small business. Haven't looked back as it meets all of my needs.
Why they chose it
"Superior 3D modelling capability. I've used Autocad since the 80's for 2D work and it just never worked well for 3D work. Solid works and Pro Engineer were out of my price range and Alibre's user interface was superior."
E S.
Verified UserMaritime · 2-10 employees
Highly reccomended software
I have been using it professionally for over ten years. I mainly use it to produce drawings for manufacturing for parts that are produced in various ways including sheet metal, CNC machining, 3D printed parts, and custom aluminum extrusions. I also use it extensively for modeling complex assemblies to determine whether parts will fit in a customer's application before they have the parts in hand.
- Alibre Design is a fully capable parametric modeling application and I can complete a product design from idea to model to production ready drawings all in the same program
- The learning curve is not steep and the price is quite reasonable
- In addition, the developers are responsive to customer feedback and are continuously improving the software
- It has some idiosyncrasies that can take getting used to, especially with the 2D drawing section
- However there have been improvements in this area in the last few years especially
Why they chose it
"The overall cost was less and it was easy to learn."
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