What you get for the money
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We have a say in my country about “bargains”. People often warn you that what you buy for cheap will often end up costing you a lot more, because it will break, it won’t last, or it simply won’t perform as it was supposed to, and you’ll end up spending more money on repairs or replacing the product altogether. I believe here in US people say, “You get what you pay for.” And you know what? It’s true.
I had been curious for a while about Alibre’s aggressive marketing and extremely low prices. No one I knew had ever used or tried the software, and many even looked down on it, yet Alibre’s salespeople advertised it pretty much implying that it could do everything SolidWorks does, but for a fraction of the price. I grew even more curious. Is this really so? Could it be that this software really does everything that SolidWorks can do but isn’t any more popular simply because bigger companies (Big Meanie SolidWorks) have made it hard for them spreading rumors that it’s not good? I mean, after all, if you look at the description in their website, it looks like it does, right? It brings Algor into the mix for the Simulation, Hypershot for renderings; it can do sheetmetal, drawings, read files from other CAD software, print 3D pdfs, etc.
If you run a quick search for Alibre jobs, you’ll probably find only one or two in the whole country, yet their website mentions quite a few companies (some of them kind of famous) that use Alibre, and reading their forums you find people that say they bought Alibre and use it to do consulting. They bought it because that’s all they could afford, which is really understandable, or because they were coming from 2D software and this was their first experience with 3D modeling and they wanted something really low priced to begin with. That is understandable too.
Well, I’m one of those that can’t afford much and that would make this software look like a great bargain for me, right? Well, not quite. Unfortunately for me, I guess you can say that I have a champagne taste on a beer budget, and that can be really sad. I decided to try the software and see how it worked. My first trial expired and I never even installed the software, but the salesman called me quite a few times and even offered me a nice financing plan to buy their Alibre Expert in easy monthly payments over a whole year and without any interests. That’s a really mind-blowing offer, but I wish it had come from a different software reseller, if you know what I mean. I told the salesman that I wouldn’t buy software if I hadn’t tried it first and was convinced it could do all that I needed/wanted from it. I mentioned to him I specifically couldn’t live without surfacing tools similar to those in SolidWorks. He stopped calling… I didn’t understand right away why he dropped me like a hot potato, but I think I just found out.
I managed to get myself a second chance to download and try their software. I can say without being conceited in any way, that it’s OK, if OK is good enough for you, but it certainly can’t do what SolidWorks does. Certainly can’t do everything that SolidWorks does; if only perhaps a fraction, and very limited. This is only my opinion, you are allowed to have yours and you can certainly disagree with me, but I guess I much rather go without, and save my pennies for something else, even if it’s not SolidWorks. I want to make it clear that I’m not a SolidWorks fanboy (fangirl?). If anything, I’m a fan of the functionality I’ve found in SolidWorks and that is not present in this other software. Perhaps, with time they will include it, but right now it’s not there.
I suppose if you are coming from 2D software or no software at all, you won’t notice this as much, but if you got spoiled as I am, then it’s really painful to look for functionality (I’m not talking bells and whistles) that is not there or that is very limited compared to what you’re used to. Fillets are a great example of this because you don’t have as many options as in SolidWorks. This is true in general, for every single command you try, you’ll find limited options when compared to SolidWorks, but perhaps the worst, for me at least, was to find nothing for surfacing tools. You can trim a solid using a surface and thicken a surface to a solid, but I didn’t find any surfacing tools for creating the surfaces inside Alibre. You are supposed to bring those from another application, such as Rhinoceros, instead, meaning that you’ll have to invest more money and time into purchasing and learning a different application. You can move a face and delete it too, but only as long as a patch can be left on its place, meaning that you can’t go from surface to solid and solid to surface and do hybrid modeling like you do in SolidWorks. For instance, I extruded a square into a cube and then tried to delete one of its faces, but Alibre kept marking this as an error. It didn’t even give me the best results when I tried importing a model from Rhinoceros into Alibre. The same model would open great in SolidWorks, even without attempting to heal any faces, but in Alibre it would open as a bunch of untrimmed surfaces intersecting each other.
Anyway, I’m not trying to bash anyone here, and I apologize if it looks like it. I just wanted to share this, for those that may be in a similar situation as I am, looking for something really good and affordable. It’s good to have information about the good and the bad, so you can make good choices. Like I said, I will pass on this one and save for something else; you may decide it’s good enough for you… or not.
Leave a Comment
December 15, 2009 at 9:31 pm
I actually know of two local companies (to my area) that use Alibre. One is a machine shop (with water jet), and the other a PCB manufacturer. Neither one is working with complex surfaces, and is probably doing minimal design work. They are probably also using Alibre to repair imported neutral files (STEP, IGES, Parasolids),
I have personally never used Alibre, nor would it be suited for my work, especially with injection-molded plastics or sheet metal (flat pattern). For the designer who is only creating the parts for machining, or the contract manufacturer, I would guess that this is the target market for Alibre.
Concerning jobs, these contract manufacturers are probably unlikely to hire a designer skilled in surface modeling, which is why they are using Alibre. It is unlikely that those who are planning to work as an independent contractor (like myself) will find much work by purchasing Alibre. Even the Pro/Engineer (Pro-E) jobs are less frequent over the past year.
The actual “twin brother” of SolidWorks is probably SolidEdge (from the parent company of Unigraphics) which uses the same Parasolids kernal as SW, and SE now has “Synchronous Technology” (direct editing) which kills the model tree history when enabled. I think the price of SE may be a little less than SW.
In all, a fair review of Alibre and good comments about its usefulness.
December 12, 2009 at 11:55 am
Hi Gabi,
I also wrote an article about the Alibre program offer. I tried using it in the past and their later versions up to the time of my article and ran into probles as well. Their is a Jewish saying also that states; “Cheap is expensive.” I believe in that fully, even though I am not Jewish. Also, how come no one ever bothers to mention that the full premium edition could very well be considered a tax deduction when used in the performance of a business? I was able to take off my electrical tools that I needed to perform my job. This SolidWorks or any other CAD program is just as much a tool to our engineers and designers as my electrical tools were to me. Bye for now.
December 11, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Keep up the good work… the skilled trades have always understood this notion of tools. We are talking about a tool to help us generate an income right? Obviously, know one likes to overpay… If the tool or in this case, the software works and has the proper customer service support… It now becomes a no brainer. The tool will pay for itself….
December 11, 2009 at 1:36 pm
My company had Alibre before one of the engineers convinced them to step up to Solidworks. I never used it, but from what I heard your analysis is about right.
What format are you using to bring in Rhino models? We’ve been purchasing .3DS files, to put together proposals quickly. We’re using a trial of Rhino to manipulate the geometry before importing into Solidworks, but the only way we’ve been successful has been with the “3DS to SLDPRT” addin (another trial)…
December 11, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Hi Mark,
I open the Rhino files in SolidWorks as *.3dm without any problems.
December 11, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Gabi, thanks for the post. I, too, was curious on Alibre’s price marketing assault a few months back (who could resist a $99 3D CAD package proclaiming feature comparisons to the big boys) and found that it really is inferior in every way from Solidworks. Then again, like you, I am also more familiar with Solidworks out of all the others but for $99, what can I say? It does what you expect for a “lower” package – I’m sure many still find it useful for more geometrical models and machine designs. Alibre needs to stop comparing themselves to Solidworks, but focus more on its capabilities. I doubt they get many Solidworks converts from their sales; like you mentioned, I guess the only thing is if you are really strapped for cash.
December 11, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Hi Daniel,
I guess grabbing the $99 sale is not so bad. Like you say, for $99, at least you get something to work with, no?… The sad part is when you start considering getting their highest-end license, the Expert, because supposedly includes all this functionality, just like the most popular applications out there, and you discover that the best they can offer is still really not what they told you it was. I find it’s a misleading marketing practice that they insist in comparing themselves to the most expensive applications, such as SolidWorks, and promising what they can’t really give you. Nowhere in their description it mentions that “little” detail about the lack of surfacing tools and needing a different application to import surfaces from, for instance. If they do, it’s very well hidden because I never saw it there and probably wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t know exactly what to look for while trying the software. I think they highlight all this other extra in the license to sort of conceal the limitations of the core package and make it look like you are indeed buying “SolidWorks twin brother” but for a price that is a steal, when in reality you are not. I think the real reason why it’s affordable is because you are getting what you are paying for and there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as they are honest about it.
Now I think about the sale they had not so long ago, the one that offered to sell you a seat for 10% of the cost any of their competitors may ask you for a “similar” license. Well, I guess we would need to redefine what “similar” really means. If you could somehow remove from SolidWorks or any of the other applications the functionality that is absent in Alibre and discount from the cost of the license, kind of like a bundle, but in the opposite direction… how much would you actually pay? That would be a real comparison.