• HeyLow 🏳️‍⚧️@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    8 days ago

    Yeah I wish Solid Edge got more attention! It’s absolutely comparable to Fusion, just the slightest bit more convoluted. I love it because I don’t have to deal with the cloud garbage, and constant sign outs on fusion.

    I’ll have to give Alibre a try it looks nice from what I saw on their website! Do you know by chance if it supports 3mf’s?

    • wjrii@lemmy.worldOP
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      7 days ago

      Alibre is nice. I find the workflow pretty sensible, even if (like Solid Edge) it feels like there are sometimes extra clicks. The Atom version is super cheap and still has a proper parametric history, but is nerfed in ways that might feel limiting ( e.g. no Boolean operations, which makes mold-making and some other complex work quite difficult). When I was getting frustrated with FreeCAD, I was starting to look around at subscriptions and realized if I just waited for a sale on a permanent license for their Professional version (I also did payments), it would become a better deal than Fusion or Shapr3D within about two years.

      Before that I was using a copy of “BeckerCAD 14 3D Pro” that I got from its German distributor for EUR20 with some reasonable success, but in addition to some truly aged and awkward camera controls and design choices, it also lacks a parametric history.

      Best I can tell, Alibre does NOT support 3mf. It supports STL, STEP, and some other single part formats though.