Alibre = Brass Tacks

So here comes the monthly Alibre marketing e-newsletter, aiming directly at SolidWorks: "SolidWorks Power for Less Than $500." They note that their software costs a fifth of what SolidWorks costs, and until the end of the month costs 1/10 as much.

Is this a test Jeff Ray's (SolidWorks' new CEO) mettle? Reminds me of when George Bush first became president, and the Chinese created an international incident involving some airplane. Usually, I figure these events are messages being sent from one country leader to another.

So, what is Greg Milliken saying to Ray?

Comments

[Deelip Menezes]

"So, what is Greg Milliken saying to Ray?"

Pretty much the same thing he has been saying all along. Nothing new.

[Jon Banquer]

I think it's much more interesting to read what Alibre users are saying to Greg Milliken.

http://www.alibre.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5925

Not sure how Greg Milliken expects to have powerful CAM run inside Alibre without what SolidWorks calls Reference Geometry Coordinate Systems. For sure I don't see it as Mecsoft's job (Mecsoft is the maker of AlibreCAM which runs inside of Alibre) to create the extra coordinate systems that are needed to efficiently machine a part or an assembly.

Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA

[Greg Milliken]

Hi Ralph,

We are indeed aiming directly at SolidWorks, namely because they represent the status quo. And our vision is to change the status quo.

I have a lot of respect for the vision of the original SolidWorks team, they had a vision to make 3D more accessible. So in that respect, Alibre thinks a lot like the SolidWorks team of old. But those folks are mostly gone. Development has been outsourced. Those remaining are part of the “Dassault Volume Channel." It's not the same company.

We are fighting a battle of competing visions, a war of ideology. The old guard is all about extracting the most money possible from every single customer and metering out the software to ensure certain revenue goals. This strategy limits access to 3D technology. Alibre’s vision is to make professional 3D CAD accessible to anyone and everyone, and to build a profitable business capable of doing so. I don’t think most will have to look very deep to see which vision is more appealing to the mainstream. This is the future.

This isn't a feature battle; recall that was how PTC first responded to SolidWorks. Clearly that was the wrong response; PTC missed the bigger picture. The entire manufacturing industry will benefit by professional 3D CAD being as common as a word processor or spreadsheet, and Alibre is the only company that is completely focused on doing that. To read more of my thoughts on this, check out my recent blog post at: http://alibre.typepad.com/

Yes, we have our issues like any company, and there are things our customers and prospects are asking for in our product that we need to address. Our approach to that is simply to listen to our customers and respond, and we are consistently doing that with every release. We’re not focused on those who have already chosen a 3D CAD application, but on the large market of new customers that are un-served and undervalued by other CAD vendors.

I noted the comment above trying to point out a thread on our user forum. Here are a few others to read as well:

http://www.alibre.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5936
http://www.alibre.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=31319#31319
http://www.alibre.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5643

Anyone can download our product now and try it for themselves, for free. I also encourage people to directly interact with our current customers on our user forum.

[Jason]

Greg, if SolidWorks has outsourced its development, then why are there programming jobs in the US and Europe but none anywhere else?

Some things like eDrawings may be developed in India and I think they use Indian resources to hunt bugs but the core SolidWorks development team is in Concord, MA with Cosmos devlepment being in California. I believe there are UK development teams as well for PDMworks and routing

Unless they are secretly outsourcing the jobs and are pretending they are hiring in the US.

[Ragnar Thor Mikkelsen]

I see it like this:
For simple parts and assemblies I works faster with Alibre than with Inventor (and thus SolidWorks?)
Most of the step by step examples that comes with an Inventor Trial are done faster with Alibre.
If you spend more time creating (fairly) simple stuff, why spend extra money and time on more complex software than you need?