CAD software

[jtwrace]

I feel like this forum is my go to forum for everything...

Does anyone have any experience with http://alibre.com/ for a 3D parametric CAD package? SW is great but way to expensive to buy for me to use personally. This looks like a great package for the money. I've been looking at the Pro version which can be bought this month for $500 less.

 

[MiTT]

The price certainly looks good for the out of the box features.

I guess it would depend on how much real collaboration you might do with other designers or suppliers. It does output standard parametric formats (STEP, SAT and IGES), but remember that those are dumb solids, so you wouldn't be able to do any editing. I guess SolidWorks can pull in a dumb solid and extract parametric features now, but I have not tried it personally. My entire organization and all of my supporting infrastructure are all using SolidWorks so we only deal in native files.

 

[Cherian]

We use proE in our office and I'm very impressed with the 3-D models. Again I'm no mechanical engineer I just know the models look good.

 

[jtwrace]

just thought I would update this thread. I purchased Solidworks 2009.