Alibre Design Opinions

Wudwlkr,

Great info. I've been thinking of trying 360 just for the heck of it. I've been paying $400/year for Alibre maintenance for 5 years now and if 360 does most of what I want and does not cost as much, it might be worth considering. I have two concerns with 360. One is that it's only free for 3 years and then it (currently) goes up to $300/year. There are many ways they can reduce the 3 year free period by changing their terms of use agreements which are one-sided contracts (same snaky business as cell phone contracts). Another issue is that I dislike cloud-based software. All vendors of cloud based software are making money off their users in various ways. There's a reason they want you connected to their servers -especially if their cloud service is provided by Amazon. All the major cloud providers are sucking marketing information from you every second you're online. I really hate that concept.

Anyhow, one point if I may add... Alibre does not require Internet access to run and you can run it that way for long periods of time. It just won't do any updates. If the maintenance license expires, it still runs indefinitely -you just won't get support or bug fixes.

Despite my concerns, I'm going to download a copy of 360 -probably this weekend and see how it goes.


Ray

After watching Ray C's pics of Alibre I remember what I liked and didn't like. It's very close to Solidworks, which was what I was coming from and I was even able to import my Solidworks drawings so that was great. It had quite a learning curve for me though, and I wasn't a big fan of the joints. The real reason I remember it negatively was just how they treated everyone when it was bought and changed to Geomagic, so maybe not a very valid opinion.

That said, I very much prefer Fusion 360's methods. Looking at the left column of Ray's screen made me go "ewww" when comparing it to what I use now. LOL Different strokes and all that jazz.

Oh, and Fusion does not require the internet to be used, and they DO get you if you want to do cloud-based rendering, but that's just an option. My PC handles it locally just fine. 'Course I'm not exactly modeling a car engine either.

Ray C said:

I have two concerns with 360. One is that it's only free for 3 years and then it (currently) goes up to $300/year.

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Ray, my understanding is the as an "enthusiast" or "hobbyist" you can get free access for one year.
Then after that one year it does NOT automatically jump to $300, but is re-newable for free.

I get that impression from their own info here:

(from https://knowledge.autodesk.com/supp...-or-educational-licensing-for-Fusion-360.html)

and also from here:
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusi...-indefinitely-if-your-a-hobbyist/td-p/6280628

Although that second link above does have some "weasel words" in the answer:

While I can't necessarily make any promises that Fusion 360 will indefinitely have a free tier, or who meets the guidelines for a free tier, please know that we are extremely committed to serving the enthusiasts, hobbyists, startups and smaller businesses. Since day one, Fusion 360 has been heavily adopted by users in this segment, and we credit a great deal of our success thus far to the usage, engagement and feedback from this community - it's is critical to our strategy, and we intend to continue that commitment.

Click to expand...

-brino

I've downloaded Fusion 360 & have been using it for a few days. I've got a lot of learning to do, but it looks pretty impressive thus far.

Fusion 360 is free for hobbyists and even for business if you gross <$100k per year. The number of people using 360 is significant, so I would say that the chance of them all of a sudden charging $300 a year is pretty much zilch. Ask the Alibre folks about that.

Also, if you join the EAA then Solidworks is also downloadable and free for home/educational use. Also, there is basically no difference between the educational and full version of SW except the prints will say say "educational use only"

Alibre has a new CAD product designed for hobby/home shop machinist level use and pricing. It looks to be about 250.00, and I believe its a one time purchase, rather than a subscription.

I currently use Inventor/HSM but am downloading a trial of the new Alibre Atom3d to try.