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Re: Alibre!?
Well, it looks interesting, mostly because it's dirt cheap compared to the heavy iron (Pro/E, Catia, Unigraphics, etc.), but apparently (in the professional version, at least) it contains many of the same features.
But, it's very hard to tell from their website whether it actually performs as advertised. I would be pleasantly surprised if it handles assemblies gracefully, and I'd be willing to give it a shot with some imported data.
Since the student editions of Pro/E are cheaper still, to say nothing of the free Inventor licences that we get via FIRST, their price advantage is moot. What they're really claiming, is that they have the principal capabilities of a $30 000 system, while costing much less—so if you're in the market for the full package it could save some money. For a new user, what's more important is function and usability. Does it crash every few minutes? Is the interface intuitive? Can it read other companies' CAD files? (They say STEP; can it do anything else?)
By the way; learning AutoCAD from a book? That sounds painful.
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