Alibre Releases Alibre Design 8.0

By DE Editors

Alibre Inc. (Richardson, TX; www.alibre.com) has released a new version of its professional 3D CAD application for mechanical design and manufacturing, Alibre Design 8.0.

According to Alibre, this is the first CAD application to fully integrate and use collaborative capabilities to deliver first class support to all customers, and provides 3D parametric solid modeling for mechanical design and manufacturing at one-fifth or less the cost of comparable products.

Alibre is also increasing the money-back guarantee period to an 60 days.

New and enhanced features in Alibre Design 8.0 include:

• Associative Design Booleans: support for join, subtract and intersect commands, and the ability to use multiple parts and assemblies as "tools" -- ideal for creating mold cavities. Change the tool and the mold cavity updates.
• 3D Sketch: sketch free-form 3D curves for use in a variety of modeling operations, including creating and routing piping or cables, or advanced sweeping and lofting.
• Enhanced Sweep and Loft Operations: supports multiple sweep paths or loft guide curves so you can create more complex sculpted shapes for consumer products and conceptual design.
• Free-form Surfaces from applications such as Rhino can be imported and used to trim solid models or thickened into a solid for further editing.
• 2D Drawing enhancements include support for images in drawing templates, flexible handling of line styles and color definitions, and improved dimensions
• Application Programming Interface: customize Alibre Design to automate repetitive tasks and improve integration with add-on applications like ALGOR DesignCheck FEA software, included with Alibre Design Professional and Alibre Design Expert.