Alibre Design | Business-Grade 3D CAD Software (2024)

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Alibre Design Overview

Alibre Design is powerful 3D CAD software suitable for mechanical design, prototyping, and manufacturing.

Easy to learn and use with straightforward workflows, built on a beautiful modern interface.

Parametric and rules-based modeling of complex mechanical systems with multiple ways to manage complexity.

Dedicated tools for modeling, sheet metal, assembly, drawing, rendering, and data/logic-driven design.

Industry-leading interoperability and a native, Python-based scripting language for automation.

What's Inside Alibre Design

Alibre Design has been refined over 24 years to help you to drive innovation across your design, manufacturing, and marketing processes.

Solidworks

Inventor

ProE/CREO

Catia

Solidedge

NX

Rhino

STEP, SAT, IGES, Parasolid

DWG, DXF, SVG

STEP, SAT, IGES

STL, OBJ

Parasolid

ZPR

JT

DWG (2D), DXF (2D)

SVG

PDF (2D & 3D)

Parametric Modeling

Precise, repeatable modeling based on design variables that are easy to change

Design-wide Variables

Store important variables in a standalone file and drive multiple designs simultaneously

Spreadsheet-driven Design

Link models to Excel documents and drive geometry directly from spreadsheets

Dynamic Model Generator

Dynamic configurators that presents options only within your data and business logic

Model Variant Management

Create multiple variants ("Configurations") of models to dramatically reduce duplication

Component Metadata

Each component has robust metadata that can be shown on manufacturing drawings

Material Library

A robust and extensible library makes assigning materials super fast

Thread Library

Share an extensible thread library across the organization for standards adherence

Standard Part Library

Coming soon. A wide variety of components from ANSI, ISO, DIN, JIS. and GB

From simple to complex

Most sheet metal parts are pretty basic, but if you need to get more exotic you'll have the power - including complex shape transitions.

Automatic flat patterns

Instantly view the flat pattern of your design at any time in the design process to ensure no overlaps and good manufacturability.

Manufacturing drawings

Turn the 3D form or flat pattern form into a 2D drawing instantly - send it right to your laser cutter or manufacturer.

Capture every manufacturing requirement

A comprehensive suite of detailing and view management tools efficiently creates an exacting representation of any model for production or patent.

Explore 2D Drawings

Bill of Materials

A customizable BoM can show many kinds of data, and exploded views with balloon callouts makes referencing easy.

Explore Bill of Materials

Standards adherence

A robust templating system lets you customize once and deploy across many drawings in a consistent and predictable way.

Make manuals & instructions

Easily make assembly instructions by defining custom views and exploded states in the 3D model and consuming them in a drawing.

Cutting Profiles

Output clean cutting profiles for laser cutters and CNC in a variety of formats.

Create and modify models

Repetitive modeling tasks can transferred into Alibre Script and run at the click of a button, saving significant time.

Access & use data sources

Access many third party data sources like Excel, CSV, Access, SQL, web data, or manually entered data. Use this data to drive geometry.

Build logic into designs

Code simple or exotic design logic based on what a user has chosen in previous steps. "If radius is between 6 and 9, holecount = 5," for example.

Math-intensive geometry

Some geometry is really math-intensive and hard to create manually. It can be much easier to generate this geometry using code.

Create a user interface

Easily create graphical user interfaces that make user inputs for data and options and use the user selections in code.

Automate tedious tasks

Need to export every file in a directory as STEP and STL? Mass update metedata for components in an assembly? Script makes it easy.