$99 for parametric 3D history-based CAD? Now that’s negotiating!
Fat white guy in a suit doing kung-fu? It’s almost scary. There’s no telling what insanity this market might drive desperate CAD companies to. Who knows what this spells for the future of Alibre in the CAD market, but for the time being, It seems to mean that some users are gonna get a heck of a deal on a useful tool.
If you are doing simple design work, you might not need to pay thousands of dollars for your CAD software. You might not even have to pay thousands just for annual maintenance.
Is your current CAD software really worth what you pay for it? I don’t mean is it theoretically worth it, I mean, do you really get out of it what you pay in? Do you get a lot of benefit from the types of things they add to the software in every release? Maybe you don’t really need all of that. Maybe your CAD supplier has lost touch with their user base. If you are doing designs of simple rectangular stuff, you don’t need a big CAD system, maybe it’s time to stop losing money on overpriced tools.
For those of you living under a rock, today Alibre announced that its $999 software is selling for $99. A thousand dollar experiment is expensive to just see if it could do what you need it to do. But a hundred dollar experiment is something you just can’t pass up.
OK, The $99 price got me to try it. Maybe it will have less bugs than Solidworks due to less features.
I wanted to try the Solidworks student edition to see how Cosmos Flow performed. Unfortunately it does not allow coexistence with a full version of Solidworks Office. Solidworks sure is a customer driven company.
Clearly Alibre are a visionary company.
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They are more positioning themselves ahead of the pack for the demise of the dollar.
In 2-3 years time they will be selling it permanently at $99 or they wont be in business.
Of course SW will be selling for $499.95 and that may still be the more attractive ‘product’…
(yeah ok I’ve done booting the FED enough through you blog Matt – I’ll stay on topic from now on
Wow, Alibre for only $99 bucks, I don’t think that price can last. but you really do bring up valid point. What are we really paying for Solidworks, I think in the past 5 years we have paid close to 10K. People this is a recession can we really afford it. Not bad Alibre,…Touché !
Hummm got me interested I dont have 99 bones but my credit card does… Still insurmountably cheaper.
Ben
Interesting enough, I recently tried a 30 day trial of Alibre. Although it didn’t have some of the features I don’t want to give up, I was impressed with how useful it was as a tool. And in all honesty I wasn’t expecting Alibre to be equal to SWX feature for feature.
If you use SWX it takes some getting used to, rotating the model is pressing left+right mouse button simultaneously, But it was pretty straightforward for me to produce some simple parts relatively quickly.
If your design work doesn’t involve complex organic surfaces, I think Alibre is a very useful tool.
I’ve only dabbled with Alibre in the past but found it lacking in some basic areas.
The most disconcerting was the lack of any warnings or errors if due to a part modification, a cut feature ended up floating in space and no longer cutting the part.
At $99.00, I’m sure they will expand their installed base, but at that price there is NO profit for the Alibre to enhance their product.
The fact I could find ZERO job listings (monster.com & indeed.com) for anyone with Alibre expertise is a good indicator of their market presence.
Alibre’s pricing strategy is nothing new. Malcolm Davies tried it with Cadkey in the 90′s. It ended up driving them into the ground.
To quote Malcolm Davies; “Professional CAD prices are simply too high,” says CADKEY CEO Malcolm Davies. “Lowering the cost of our mainstream CADKEY 6 program to $495 reflects the real world of the 1990s for software.”
Yeah, I don’t doubt that this could wind up having an overall negative impact on Alibre. It could also be a desperate last effort to produce some cashflow. I have been expecting this recession to yield some CAD market casualties, crowded as it is. Producing 1000 seats of software costs about the same as producing 1. Once that first seat is paid for, the rest is gravy.
But, the main point here is that users (and bean counters) have an option for certain types of work.
So I did it, I bought a $99.- seat of Alibre. I currently run SolidWorks Premium 2009. Why in the world would I buy the $99.- Alibre seat?
Primary reason, I think it will be fun. Having an active seat of Alibre, rather than a 30-day trial will allow me to evaluate the software in detail, and I will be able to provide them with some real feedback based on actual use of the software.
I think the only way to really evaluate software is to use it in a real project and that’s exactly what I intend to do without any time constraints.
This by no means will stop me from using SolidWorks for my every day commercial work, but I think it will be a fun experiment and I bet I will learn some things along the way.
It’s just like Matt said, “a hundred dollar experiment is something you just can’t pass up”.
@Mark Landsaat
Excellent! Let us know what your impressions of Alibre are. I have a feeling that curiosity seekers are going to buy more than a couple seats of this software at that price. I agree with you about software evaluation. Working through tutorials is one thing, but doing problem solving is most of what 3D modeling is about, I think, and that’s where you will find out if this software has what it takes.
Alibre have a habit of doing this kind of thing. They used to have Alibre Design Xpress for free but that kind of fizzled away from the public eye. Interestingly here in the UK it is £100 not $100….same old tactic!
The only question I have is how they can afford to pay the license fees to Spatial for using ACIS and D-Cubed for the use of the DCM stuff they use and make any margin at all. I had always assumed the license costs would amount to at least $100 – maybe not? If not it goes to show how much CAD companies mark up!
One question though. Is this version 11 or version 12? V12 has a lot more SolidWorks like functionality and better performance. Is this just a tactic to get you to buy the v11 product then bombard you with emails offering an update to v12 for $500? Probably. If there is one thing I’ve learned if it sounds like it’s too good to be true it probably is!
Anyway, I’ve used Alibre in previous versions and it does the job for many potential users but unfortunately I’m not one as I need the kind of surfacing tools SolidWorks has and Alibre lacks. Thinking about it perhaps that is why they can offer the proce they can. Maybe they have licensed a subset of ACIS (if indeed that is possible), or just agreed to not build in any surfacing tools?
@Kevin Quigley
Hi Kevin, just a little more info regarding the offer, this is for V11, not V12. However if you buy V11 with maintenance now I think at around $200.- additional you can upgrade to V12 when released. That would make about $300.- total, still a bargain.
I didn’t get the additional maintenance, for me it’s just a fun experiment at this point.
And what do you think about SpaceClaim for 1000 dollars???? Is it the same negative impact?
Ernest.
Spaceclaim for $1000 is not the same kind of deal that Alibre for $99 is. Spaceclaim is a decent tool, although I have to say that in my work, I would probably not use it. If I were working with a lot of basic translated parts, it would be an indespensible tool.
Spend another $99 on PunchCAD’s ViaCAD 2D/3D, also ACIS-kernel, for surface capability, including covers and parametric (law). Very complementary, no translation issues with .sat.
*****
Hmmm, borderline spam. Anything related to the rest of the discussion to say?
Ouch. Not my intention. The correspondents remarked on Alibre’s surfacing shortfall, I noted how I overcome some of it. Wipe it if it’s too tangential.
Murray actually has a good point Matt. Viacad in itself is a subset of Punch’s Shark software. All of which is pretty similar to Ashlar’s Cobalt/Xenon of a version or 2 back (was same team that wrote it). I know some Ashlar users who have bought Alibre Design (older versions) to do drafting and parametric type layout work as a combo with Xenon and Cobalt. This is maybe not relevant anymore as Ashlar’s products are a but better for drafting and Spaceclaim has come along and now fits in better with teh Ashlar product workflow. Nonetheless if I was ona real budget – $99 for Alibre Design plus whatever ViaCAd is (I think $99 but is this the version with surfacing?) and you have a $200 system based on ACIS that will do a lot of what many users will ever need.
Case in point though is that ViaCAd and derivatives have been around for years at these low price points and they haven’t flooded the pro market – what does that tell us?
I think all the major cad software companies could benefit from lowering their prices to meet the needs from the large number of small businesses that do design and manufacturing.
If SolidWorks was $400-500 instead of $4,000+, I’m sure they would see an increase in profit just by satisfying the demand curve.
As a SolidWorks reseller, I have to admit this is a great opportunity for those out there to get there hands on a 3D parametric tool for dirt cheap. Especially for those who are still in 2D. However, the real way to sell a lot of software is to have a strong reseller channel as SolidWorks does. No software company can do a good job supporting their own software all by themselves…especially as they get bigger and bigger. I don’t believe in Alibre’s business model as they don’t have enough money to continually make their software better…and there are no margins to develop a strong reseller channel. Just look at SolidEdge. A very capable, and strong tool that failed to grow due to the decimation of their reseller channel by cutting their margins. We all know that software like this requires good quality support, not only for technical problems but for training. Alibre may be small enough now to offer good support, but what will it be like in 5 or 10 years when calling them up for support is like trying to deal with your bank? I think they want to get bought out personally…
Here’s a though:
How much an hour do you think SW Pro + maintainence + a computer cost you?
1 year = 2000 hours
SW Pro $5000 (depreciate over 5 years) = 5000/5/2000 = .50
Maintaince $1500 per year = 1500/2000 = .75
Nice computer $5000 (depreciate over 2 years) = 5000/2/2000 = 1.25
Total cost = .50 + .75 + 1.25 = $2.50 per hour
Here’s another thought:
I work as a contractor and even though I spend a lot of time working, not every hour in the office is billable CAD work. I use SW about 70% of my billable hours. On average I bill 25 hours per week for SW work. And I run SW Premium. for ease of calculation lets say 50 weeks per year. 50×25=1250.
1 year = 1250×70%=875 hours
SW Premium $9000 (depreciate over 5 years)= 9000/5/875=2.06
Maintenance $2000 per year = 2000/875= 2.29
Nice computer $5000 (depreciate over 2 years) =5000/2/1250=2.00
Total cost= 2.06+2.29+2.00=$6.35 per hour
I have been contracting for almost five years and these numbers are not hypothetical, but based on my billable hours in the real world and to me it seems that $6.35 is a pretty steep overhead cost per hour.
Hi Matt,
It’s been a few weeks since I installed $99.- Alibre. I tried to recreate a welded aluminum front triangle for a full suspension mountainbike. This project was optimized for machining (read prismatic) so I thought it would be a good fit for Alibre.
Once I started modeling some of the parts I realized that I was missing features that I use frequently. One example was the “split line” command. Although I think the geometry can still be created another way, it turned out to be more time-consuming than I thought.
Next hurdle was a geometry layout sketch for my assembly to constrain the parts. Alibre does not allow sketching in the assembly environment. This can be solved using math to constrain parts, but it would require more time than I want to spend on this project.
So far it has not been as easy as I thought it would be to recreate this project. Right now, I decided to go in a different direction with this. When I first started using SolidWorks years ago I bought a little Lego F1 car and modeled it in SolidWorks. This helped me a lot learning to use SolidWorks at the time.
This weekend I bought a new Lego kit and will now try to recreate that using the Alibre software. More to follow.