The Voron kit build thread

AlanB said:
Ken226, I'm considering trying Alibre. How do you like it? Something else I should consider instead? Looks like you are an experienced user.
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There's no simple, one line answer, so this might be a long reply. Basically, I have Design Expert and love it.
But I started with Atom, and hated it.


Some of my observations regarding Alibre, and the former Inventor/Solidworks/ Fusion users who come over to Alibre Forum with questions while trying the Alibre products.



Alibre has three levels of CAD. The hobby level Atom, then the other two (Pro and Expert).


Atom is very different from Pro and Expert. It's barebones, modeling and drawings. Nothing else.


1. First, I'll talk about Atom.

Atom is very capable, but there are no "easy buttons". If your coming from Fusion, you'll probably expect lots and lots of easy buttons, and get really frustrated that they don't exist. By "easy buttons", I mean things the average Fusion user will take as normal, indespensable, like a thread button, a scale button for changing the size of a sketch, etc, etc. In Atom, everything will be done the hard way.

Example of creating threads the hard way, with no thread button in Atom:

In Atom, all of the things your accustomed to doing with a single click in Solidworks/Inventor, will be done the hard way. To scale up a sketch, you'll constrain and dimension the various lines, arcs, etc, until it's the right size.

The good part about Atom,l is that it is the world's best training tool for Design and Expert. IF you have the patience and persistence to become competent with Atom, you'll be able to accomplish anything with Design/Expert.


2. Now Design/Expert

They are pretty much the same CAD (solid modeling and drawings) program. Expert comes with a sheet metal module and a very good third party program, Keyshot, for rendering photorealistic images, whereas Pro is basically just the modeling and drawings modules.

Pro and Expert have most, if not all, of the easy buttons that an Inventor/Solidworks user would be accustomed to.

All of Alibre's CAD versions work similar to Solidworks, but with a kinda, backwards workflow. Alibre likes simpler sketches, preferring the complexities to be done in the 3d modeling environment.

Example: in Solidworks, to create a cube with filleted edges, I would create a square sketch, then fillet the corners of the sketch into a cube. In Alibre, it better handles it with the sketch left square, and the fillets added to the solid part after.


Alibre prefers more, simple sketches. No overlaps allowed. Only closed loops. whereas an Inventor user can create a complex sketch, then choose various parts of the sketch to extrude in different ways. In Alibre, it's simple sketch/ extrude. Then another simple sketch/extrude, etc. basically, accomplishing the same thing in a linear manner, via lots of small steps, instead of all at once.


Another example:
In Inventor I might create a motorcycle clutch cover by sketching the exterior perimeter. Then sketching the interior cavity then sketching the screw pattern. All in one sketch. After, I'd do an extrude operation on the outer perimeter to 25mm thick (create the body), select the inner sketch and extrude to only 5 mm thick, (the cavity), the select the screw holes and extrude cut "through all" to leave the holes.

Whereas in Alibre, to get the same part I'd first sketch the outer perimeter, and "extrude boss" it into a solid. Then I'd sketch the cavity and "extrude cut" to the needed depth. Then, is sketch the screw pattern and "extrude cut" all the way through.

So, basically, in Inventor you can do one big complex sketch, then one big complex extrude.
With Alibre you'll need to do simple sketch/extrude, sketch/extrude, sketch l/extrude.

Hope this helps
 
Btw, that video makes it look a lot more time consuming than it is. I can actually model those threads in about 10 seconds when not deliberately going slow for a video.
 
Ken226 said:
There's no simple, one line answer, so this might be a long reply. Basically, I have Design Expert and love it.
But I started with Atom, and hated it.
...
Click to expand...

Thanks for the detailed reply. That's very useful. I'm coming at this with no mechanical CAD background, so no expectations from other software. My backgrounds are in electronics and software engineering and have used OpenSCAD for dozens of small projects the last few years. So I'm used to doing things the hard way. But I need something a bit more capable than OpenSCAD for some things and don't care for the annual bleed or "free restrictions" of most MCAD packages. There's no easy answer. :)
 
AlanB said:
Thanks for the detailed reply. That's very useful. I'm coming at this with no mechanical CAD background, so no expectations from other software. My backgrounds are in electronics and software engineering and have used OpenSCAD for dozens of small projects the last few years. So I'm used to doing things the hard way. But I need something a bit more capable than OpenSCAD for some things and don't care for the annual bleed or "free restrictions" of most MCAD packages. There's no easy answer. :)
Click to expand...

Alibre's pricing model is one of the things that drew me to it. While for design pro or expert, It isn't cheap, but it is a lifetime license.

Maintenance is totally optional. Alot of guys get the lifetime license, then buy maintenance about once every 4 or 5 years so they can snag the newest release with all the latest features.

I started out with Atom and got so frustrated with having to ask questions on the forum every time I couldn't figure something out, that I upgraded to pro, then later to expert.

Now, with all the stuff Ive learned in the past few years, I feel like I could do fine with Atom now. Ironically, Atom is marketed to hobby users, but is actually much harder on the average hobby user than Pro and Expert.

If youre considering buying Atom, I'd recommend using the Atom trial. The Design Expert trial will give you a very false sense of Atoms workflow.

If it helps, most of the tutorial videos I posed in the CAD section, and on my YouTube acct are created with Atom users in mind. I try (when I can remember) to only use tools available in Atom.


Joseph (Joko Engineering) is an employee of Alibre, an active member of the Alibre forum, and has some of the best CAD tutorial videos there is, on YouTube.

He's always popping in over at the forum and answering questions, or even making custom videos to show members how to accomplish something.

 
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Joko Engineering also has a series of excellent videos on learning FreeCAD. It's how I learned FreeCAD. Learning any CAD requires seat time. Took me about 21 days to get it from a very cold start. @Ken226 is a wizard, I can't profess to be anywhere close to his abilities. But I can and do design a bit with FreeCAD. The price is right, and there's no risk of getting screwed financially. Perfect for my use. If I were using CAD professionally, I would take a hard look at Alibre, at least based on what Ken has shown here.
 
Progress has slowed due to other distractions, so here we are. I like to test the 24V supply before going further so as not to put anything else at risk, so we start with the AC and supply wiring. Once the 24V supply has been verified further wiring may commence. There's a lot of room under this 350 Voron V2.4. However the AC is not totally protected, so one has to be careful. This is sitting inverted on a small low table, the workbench is too high for a machine this size!

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