Learning Alibre/Geomagic - Quick to learn - based on existing plans

[schilpr]

I'm a pretty decent CAD draftsman, in 2D, never done anything mechanical in 3D. Last week I downloaded Alibre (now Geomagic) to see what I could accomplish.

Been playing a but today, and I think I'm getting the hang of it. This is based on the Brass-T model, but is by no means an accurate representation, it was just the set of drawings I had laying around and used as my guide.

The point of the post, anyone with decent 2D CAD skills can pickup Geomagic and do 3D designing in a matter of a few hours.

This is an assembly based on 4 different parts.

 

[jgedde]

Alibre is a decent package fro the price albeit sometimes buggy. It's rather impressive with regard to the things you can do. I wasn't aware that the name had changed to Geomagic. I just upgraded my license 6 months ago and it was still Alibre. Here's the J.E. Howell Farm Boy that I did in Alibre and a rendering of it done in KeyShot.

John

 

[Dave Sohlstrom]

I've been a Alibre user from day one when they rolled the program out. New name is dumb, but I guess we have to put up with it.
Here is an engine and Zdrive that I hope to put a pair in a model tow boat.
rendered in KeyShot.

Dave

 

[jwcnc1911]

I'll kill 2 birds with one stone... been wanting to mention grabcad here so here is a link to my Allibre drawn Julius de Waal rhombic I'm building along with a few other projects I did. Flip around that site if you find 3d cad interesting.

http://grabcad.com/library/rhombic-stirling-by-julius-de-waal

 

[///]

Alibre user here too. Brilliant program for the $200 pricetag.
Wish I could justify the expense of an upgrade to Pro (or even Expert) for the Save/Import/Export options but the $200 PE version is still very good value.

I wasn't aware that the name had changed to Geomagic

It only changed a few week ago with what was to be the release of Alibre Design 2013.
3DSystems recently acquired a company called Geomagic which apparently is a respected name in professional circles (even if the Founder/CEO Ping Fu is a bit controversial) so they went with that new name for Alibre.
The new naming is a pretty big issue with the long term users on the Alibre Forums as you can imagine.
I refuse to say Geo Magic Design, so instead just shorten it Geo Design when talking with people, has a better ring to it I reckon.

I use Autodesk Inventor at work and can honestly say I personally find Alibre much easier to use and more intuitive.

 

[jwcnc1911]

I'm hooked on this right now so here it is. First as it appears in allibre and a few renders in keyshot.

 

[///]

Brilliant program for the $200 pricetag.
Wish I could justify the expense of an upgrade to Pro (or even Expert) for the Save/Import/Export options but the $200 PE version is still very good value.

I was due for an upgrade and as noted above, really didn't want to spend $1000(actually, $1200 incl. GST from Australian dealer) to get import/export options.

Well.... the big news:
As of last week, Sherline(yes, the lathe manufacturer) are now a dealer for Geomagic Design software. They have PE (Personal Edition), Pro and Expert versions for the same price as all the other dealers, however, and this is the big news... they also have a PE "Sherline Edition" which includes the Import/Export module for only $50 more than the vanilla PE version... so $249, bargain!

Normally you would either have to pay $999 for the Pro version, or, an additional $249 to have the Import/Export module activated in the PE version(which is $199 itself, or $220 incl GST in Australia)

This deal was impossible to refuse so I attempted to purchase a licence the day it was announced. Sadly, Sherline wanted me to wait while they added the option to their online store and then I had a credit card issue(not my doing, bloody Visa) and also the delays of sending email replies in different time zones, but, it is all sorted now and I've been using it for the last couple of days and I'm a VERY happy chappy! Thm:

Edit:
Disclaimer, I have no affiliation with either Sherline or Geomagic other than as a customer and they are not paying me for an endorsement. I just figure, as hobbyists, this is a massive boon to us and it was worth sharing the information.