Alibre 2012 Now Released - Overview

Alibre 2012 was released recently on CADDIT Australia. Alibre is an affordable, easy-to-use 3D CAD software for mechanical design of parts, assemblies and design drawings. Files from SolidWorks, Solid Edge, Autodesk Inventor and other mechanical design software can also be used in Alibre. Alibre is best known for its low cost and simplicity: users can easily create complex 3D CAD designs for the fraction of the cost of other systems.

Alibre 2012 offers a completely reworked graphical user interface, with a style similar to other Windows 7 productivity applications. New tools have been added for surfacing, sketching, relations and more. .


Alibre Design introduced in-place editing last release, as an enhancement in 2D drafting. This year, in-place editing toolbars have been introduced for part modelling, notably for sketch creation. In-place editing greatly improves speed-of-interface by reducing mouse travel for each command, and need to manually change toolbars. Alibre Design 2012 also lets you project sketches to other sketches, letting you reuse the work you've already done in new features.

Two major enhancements have been included for surface modelling. Surfaces may now be pasted directly from either MoI (free with Alibre Design Expert) or Rhino CAD. A complete new toolset for surface manipulation includes commands for Split Surface, Trim Surface, Stitch, Convert Solid to Surface, Create Surface from Face, and Delete Face.

2D mechanical drafting enhancements include support for multiple leaders from a single annotation, more flexible hatching, improved drafting geometry constraints and border selection for notations. .

Other general improvements include the placement of InterDesign relations in Alibre Design's feature tree and secondary cuts for sheet metal parts. For a free 30 day trial of the new Alibre 2012 - either as Windows XP 32-bit or Windows 7 64-bit native application - download Alibre 2012 HERE.

CADDIT has been supporting Alibre Design products in Australia since 2008. For more information about Alibre Design in Australia, contact CADDIT.net HERE.

The Four Os For Finding Work (as a CAD Designer)

Personally, I think that the four Os for finding work are really more or less an elaborate way of saying "gather more information", with four keyword points that just help us remember four useful aspects. This article focuses on applying them to find work in design careers, but they can be used in other fields too:

1. Offer: You need to know what the actual offer is, the real "give and take" of your current job market. Knowing (and accepting) the general offer climate is important when negotiating any specific opportunities discussed in point two. Have you discussed your search with those who already work in the field? What skills do you offer now? Should you offer more? What are employers really offering in return? Do they offer more elsewhere (or less)? Is money your only consideration? Will you get a better offer in another line of work? Do not assume that a more affluent country automatically offers higher wages in all fields. Finding an appropriate salary survey sometimes helps, like this one from AUGI (Autodesk User Group International) for 2008.

2. Opportunities: Establish all potential employment you are willing to accept. Do you know all of the specific design opportunities in your region? Are you willing to work part-time? Full-time? There are a number of online contract work portals available:

• Elance
• ScriptLance
• CAD Ground
• CADAuctions
• GetAFreelancer
• iFreelance.com
• DesignQuote
• Sologig
• Space Master Interiors
• countless more... (comments and feedback welcome)

As a tip, I find the most successful job hunter is never unemployed, because to him/her finding a job is already viewed seriously as opportunity. One could ask oneself, "What opportunities am I NOT yet using to find work? For example, do my friends and/or family know I am looking for this kind of job? Have I checked with all local employment offices & employment websites? Am I willing to try contract work agencies and temp services?"

3) Obstacles: Know why you are unemployed now. Is it the area you live in? Is it your level of experience? Is it new technology? What is it? Be honest, at least with yourself. Know the answer and fix it if you can.

4) Operation: Once you gather information, use it to your advantage - even when you don't have a job yet. Understand intimately the needs of each potential employer before the job interview, not after. Know your market and find your niche in it. Learn new skills that are marketable. Find ways to meet others already successfully working in the field you want and listen to them. Sometimes CAD Internet forums can be useful for finding the right community of people to talk to. Finally, share your research with other people who are, in turn, willing to share with you. If you aren't sharing then don't have friends. But if you share too much, other people might just start to use you. Try to find that balance.

3D Industrial CAD Software Upgrades Free For Two Years

CADDIT CAD CAM Australia is pleased to announce a special promotion for engineers looking for affordable 3D industrial engineering software. Buy VariCAD for Windows or Linux right now until September 30, and receive two years of free upgrades. What makes this offer especially exciting are some major product enhancements planned for the product during the free two year upgrade period which include advances in 3D parametric design and simulation. To further encourage Australia and New Zealand engineers to buy before October, CADDIT is offering special online pricing. The total savings of this special offer total to over 50% the normal price.

VariCAD is affordable 3D industrial design CAD software for practical engineers. It offers robust 3D mechanical design tools and associative 2D ANSI, ISO or DIN drafting layouts. VariCAD includes several applications for sheet metal, fit-out and profile construction, interference checking in assemblies and extensive libraries of standard parts which can be included in any design. Sharing designs with external systems is made easy through extensive ISO STEP, IGES, Autodesk DWG and DXF support. For those new to VariCAD, it can be downloaded and used free for 30 days, but this free upgrade offer will still end on September 30 2008. There are also videos, tutorials and other resources on the CADDIT website.

VariCAD has been meeting the needs of mechanical and design engineers for over a decade. This latest special offer includes two years of completely free product upgrades and technical support. There will probably never be a more affordable offer to buy this product. More information about VariCAD is available from CADDIT CAD CAM Australia.

FREE eBOOK for Migrating Board Drafting and Hand Sketch Designs to CAD

Are you an engineer, draftsman, architect, landscape artist, surveyor, sheet metal wood or plastics designer that does all drawings using a t-square and triangle? Are you thinking about using CAD but worried about the cost involved? CADDIT is happy to release a new, complete free eBook entitled "CADDIT Guide: From Board Drafting and Hand Sketch Designs to CAD" to answer these questions and more. Even if you are a CAD designer with several years experience, the reference information given in this free publication is well worth having. This free eBook is available now from http://www.caddit.net/auto-cad/AutoCAD.php and discussion is held on the CADDIT forum at http://www.caddit.net/forum/ .

This eBook includes the first section of a CAD tutorial that demonstrates opening and editing AutoCAD files without AutoCAD software, using progeCAD Professional CAD software. More information about progeCAD is at http://www.caddit.net/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1

Introducing T-Flex CAD Design

T-FLEX CAD Brochure - Upload a doc

Read this doc on Scribd: T-FLEX CAD Brochure

progeCAD 8.0.18 Free IntelliCAD Upgrade for Current progeCAD 2008 Customers

progeCAD 2008 8.0.18 IntelliCAD has been released. This is a free upgrade for all current progeCAD 2008 customers. progeCAD Professional users can upgrade online simply by clicking "Help -> Check Update" from the progeCAD menu bar. progeCAD Standard and progeCAD Smart! will also be upgraded soon.

New features and fixes in 8.0.18
General features and fixes
TEXT: Dwgcodepage will be automatically set to syscodepage in new drawings in order to handle different charsets (cyrillic, greek, chinese, etc)
TEXT: "Open this dialog when the drawing and system code differs" option has been fixed in the CODEPAGE dialog
TEXT: Fixed text alignement in right to left languages
TEXT: Fixed MTEXT dialog issue with very small text size
DIMENSION: Fixed prefix/suffix direct change in dimensions
DIMENSION: Fixed text direction after a dimension mirroring
DIMENSION: Fixed crash on angular dimension mirroring command
DRAW: Fixed Proxy AEC support in drawings
DRAW: Fixed opening problem with some files having anonymous blocks in them
DRAW: No more progeCAD crashes with close zoom in viewports inside the paper space with hidden lines
DRAW: Fixed opening by double clicking dwg files (problem related to just a few systems)
DRAW: Fixed NONE temporary snap issue
DRAW: Rotate now works even with ANGBASE and ANGDIR different from default
COMMANDS: Added -block command from command line
COMMANDS: Fixed crash with some "Multiple copy" command options
COMMANDS: Fixed ATTDEF command options
IMAGES: Incremented the available memory for images insertion, avoiding so some progeCAD 2008 crash
IMAGES: Added the georeference automatic management for ECW images
DISPLAY: Fixed real time Zoom and Pan commands in paper space
DISPLAY: Fixed viewport diplay problem with hidden lines and ucs that differs from the global one
DISPLAY: Fixed a display problem with some drawings having viewports in paper space
PERFORMANCES: Improved saving performances of dwg files
PERFORMANCES: Improvement in selection/deselection in blocks with attributes
PERFORMANCES: Fixed the Esnap selection problem in drawings having Xref or Blocks with a lot of entities (the mouse slowed down)
PERFORMANCES: Memory improvement in saving operations
PERFORMANCES: Little SNAP steps cause no more problems
PERFORMANCES: Fixed opening issue in a few situations with files having Proxy entities
PERFORMANCES: Speeded up work on drawings with not available inserted images. No more persisent error messages at command line.
MENU: Fixed Draw->Surfaces->3D Face menu item
MENU: The maximum number of menu items now is 8000 (before it was 3000)
ALE : "Back to ALE after insert" option now works correctly
INSTALLATION: No more error message while installing with the NOPDF option if the user privileges are low
REGISTRATION: Fixed USB key registration

A complete trial verion for progeCAD can be downloaded from CADDIT or purchased online.