Parametric CAD Sketch Design using Alibre

    Welcome to the tutorial section of the use of Alibre Design 11.0. As you open Alibre Design perhaps for the first time, the following navigator will appear:

    These are simple options which allow the user to be able to choose the necessary Operation required for the user. Everything is self explanatory from the image or from the balloon tips provided as you run your mouse over the appropriate icons. But for this session of the tutorial, we will start from the first icon "create new parts you can put into an assembly". Once you have done this a new window should open as below:

Overview of Alibre Design

Now there are four parts to this window which will be of major interest to you as you work your way through your first project on Alibre.

On the far left, the design explorer will be the list of things you done to your project and also help you navigate back and forward from changing little errors to major changes to the design itself due to manufacturing limitation. This will save you time and lots of heartache by remember how to navigate around here.

Next is the far right, this is known as the sketching Interface with all majority of Alibre sculpting tools you be playing with. Now with a lot of the tools which are made available here for you to use. It is good to remember that when are designing a 3D design that you will have ensure that your primary sketch is closed up properly or that you use the analyse sketch when you are in 2D sketch mode. As show here as an example here: 

The Next area of consideration is the top of the screen where u can see a single Toolbar. This Toolbar is your Basic Operation bar. The Bar itself can be customized accordingly to your preference in have different Tools at your disposal without having to go through the tools tabs one by one. The Final part of the Screen is the most obvious, the Work Area. This where your design will take shape and be able to manipulate your design requirements.

Navigation in Alibre

You may want to take note of the edges of the workspace are noted with its orientation Planes of  X, Y and Z. The little Image at the bottom left of the workspace will help a lot to know which direction are facing as you progress in your design. With the Design explorer, you can also use the plane and axis tabs there to help you find your orientation as well. But as a guide for first time users, I highly recommend going to the Basic Operation Bar and right clicking the bar to enable the list of orientations as seen in the follow screenshot. By Choosing the orientation bar, this will allow for you to navigate much more easily and allow to orientate yourself if you are getting lost in where you are. With the Bar enable, by using a few simple clicks to the appropriate icon, it will allow to get back to where you want to be without having to fidget too much on the work space.

Now that you have got a rough idea on how to navigate around Alibre's Workspace, we will be looking at how to manipulate the model in real time now. Getting Orientation or View of the Sketch in the workspace is as simple as picking a plane, holding both left and right mouse buttons down and moving the plane. To position yourself in the sketch or workspace, you can use the Panning as well as Zoom Functions which are provided in the Basic Function Bars. Panning will allow to Position on the Workspace without changing the view of the Sketch or model that working on. To use this opinion of Panning, Select the panning icon, hold down the left mouse button and moving the mouse to the desired location. A faster way to do this by using the arrow keys on the Keyboard to orientate to the desired position.  Zooming will give an greater overview of the model from a distance or focusing more closely to details on the model itself. To Zoom, Simple Click the Zoom icon, holding the left mouse button and moving to the desired position on the screen. Likewise you just use the Mouse scroll button to enable this function as well. If you have just change the view and you need to go back to previous orientation, there is a previous view icon on the View toolbar that you can use to do so.

CAD Drawing with Alibre

With all of knowledge of how to navigate around Alibre, we can now start Designing with Alibre Design! For this part of the tutorial. we will be working with designing a part. To start up, we will open up in Home and select design Part. Now before setting of to design the part, we will need to setup parameters for the design. To do this, Go to file select Properties and should get a new window titled Design Properties which has 6 tabs similar to the one shown here:

Here will be able to setup everything you will be needing for the properties of the design. As you can see from the tabs displayed here, we see that there is General tab, Units dimension, Materials Display and Apply Opinions.

The general tab is where you can add in any information related to the design, From the designer to the date to estimated cost of the design all be added in the table box on the bottom left of the window. Units tab will give the opinion to use, change the units of measurement and the accuracy on the design as well as to allow for any additional conversions of Units from one to another. The dimension tab allows for changes with how dimensions are going to be displayed on model design if added to the Model. Materials Tab will allow for for you to choose what sort of material is being used for this design. With Alibre, you use the set materials which are commonly used in production or a custom made alloy. This will allow for the design to give real time analysis of surface area, weight and inertia with a degree of accuracy depending on the setting used. Display opinions are used based on the user on their preference to certain aspects of the model which are to be viewed. The Apply opinions allow for the user to decide to apply these changed made to the design only or to the entire system since that the user will be focusing on designing this part a major project.

To design a sketch, you need to select 2D sketching on the right hand side where to the sketch tool bar is or alternatively go to the tab Sketch and Select Activate 2D Sketch. Now once you have done this you may of noticed an additional Bar popping up just in between the top basic operation toolbar and your workspace. The bar looks like the image shown here

This bar will help you by giving reference Grid as well as giving you to opinion to analyse your sketch for any errors or any open sketches which need to be closed to allow for the sketch to be complete. Once you decide which grid settings, you press apply and then onto a plane to work on. This will allow for the all the sketch opinions to be available to you for usage.

To draw with the sketch required on the plane, ensure that you are in 2D drawing model, select the plane in which you wish to be drawing in and now select one of the following tools to use to do the sketches with:

            Drawing Lines (Far left icon) - Icon which allows you create lines. To create a line, click the icon and then onto the work area within the plane. click once with left mouse button to place your first anchor point for the line and drag out to the desired length and click once again at the desired point to form the line. You may notice that your second point will transform to another anchor point allowing you create another line connected to the original line made. When you create the next line connected to the first one you may notice that the first line is highlighted and perpendicular symbol is formed like the following

This is to help you to see that you have formed a perpendicular angle to the previous line. This is the same when the third line is formed and a double lines icon is formed on lines parallel to one another. This symbol indicates that your lines are parallel. You also may see an equal symbol as well. This indicates the two lines are of equal length. To finish up with drawing lines, simple press the esc button to exit.

                                Drawing Reference Lines (Middle icon) - Usually on used to help to user to design reference figures which are required later on for tools as the mirror tool or the helical cut tool which require a reference figure to work off. To use the reference line tool, it follows the same method as the line drawing tool. Note that the reference line tool will not interfere with any sketch models which are in the 2D plane and will NOT close the sketch if used.

            Drawing Circles (Far left Icon)- Icon here will allow for the creation of circles. To create a circle in your design, just simple click on the circle icon, then onto the workspace in which think the centre on circle would probably go and then click and drag out the circle to its desired size. Click again once you are done with the size of the circle. If the circle however, is not in the position which you would like it to be, simple change to the select icon in your toolbar (resembles crosshairs), click the centre of the circle where there is a dot and drag it to the desired location. Release the Drag to complete the move. Similarly with the drawing lines with the symbols indicating if you are perpendicular to the previously drawn line, when drawing a circle, a tangent symbol will form if your circle forms a tangent with any one of the lines surrounding it.

                                Drawing Eclipses (Middle icon)- This icon will allow for the creation of Eclipses. the difference which making a circle to an eclipse is that Alibre will allow you to form the first axis of the eclipse. This helps you to choose the direction as well as the length of the eclipse. To make an eclipse, start by going to the eclipse icon shown here, click on the desired area of the workspace and drag the first axis to the desired length and direction. Once you are happy with the first axis, click once again to form the eclipse to the desired size or shape. Click once more to complete the drawing of the eclipse. To move or modify the eclipse, click either the centre dot to move to another location or click one of the dots on the edges of the eclipse to modify the size of direction of the eclipse.

                                 Drawing Circular Arcs ( Centre, Start, End )( Far left icon [1]) - Now to draw Circular arcs, drawing the length of radius of arc using the circle given with this function, click once and move the mouse to the desired length of the arc and click to finish. Due to the nature of the circular arc, it is good to plan out where you would like to place the arc in the first place. The reason for this is that the Circular arc is much more trickier to move about since that radius of the arc will change and cause a cascade of troubles change it back to the desired size and shape. Make note you can change the length of the arc and the radius from the centre on the circle, but any alterations to any of these points will change the shape of the arc respectively. The following images will help to see how this is done

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                                   Drawing Circular Arcs( Start, End and Radius)( Mid left icon [2]) - Probably the easiest out of the two use to draw circular arcs with. But this point of view is subjective based each user. To Drawn Circular Arcs with this method is to click on the respective icon. Click the first point where the start of the Arc and move the mouse to the where the end of the arc is going to be placed and click. This will form a line which will allow for you to manipulate to form the arc by simple moving the line until it arcs at the desired angle. The follow images will help to demonstrate how this is done

                                    Drawing Circular Arcs (Tangent, Start, End)( Mid right icon [3]) - The Circular Arc using a Tangent requires to off an existing drawn line on the workspace for it work. To draw the circular arc using tangent point requires the icon to be click on, clicked once again on the desired existing line and moved to the desired length and direction. click once again to complete the arc. The Circular arc by tangent has the same short comings as the Circular Arcs via centre as you are unable to modify the arcs without changing everything else. This applies also to the line which the arc is attached.

                                    Drawing Elliptical Arcs ( Far Right right icon [4]) - The Elliptical Arc are drawn very similarly to how you would draw an eclipse. The only difference is that the arc is made by the third and forth clicks as they position how much of the arc is kept with the highlighted areas in blue as show here.

                                    Drawing Rectangles by two point system (Left icon) - Pretty straight forward on on how to draw the rectangle. To draw simple click the first anchor point and the dragging the rectangle to desired length and clicking once again to complete the task.

                                    Drawing Rectangles by three point system ( Middle icon) - Similar concept to the two point system, but with the extra point this allows for the orientation of the rectangles in different positions. To perform this drawing, the three point rectangle icon must be clicked. The first click on the workspace will allow for the first point as an anchor for the rest of the rectangle, the second point will show the orientation of rectangle as the third will define the size of the rectangle.

                                    Drawing Polygons (Right icon) - The drawing polygons are done by enabling the polygon icon. An additional window with the settings for the drawing of the polygons should appear and should look like the following picture. If this doesn't occur, go to sketch tab - figures and polygons. The window will allow to change the amount of sides as well as the orientation of the shape via side of the angle first. Once you have selected this, move your mouse to the workspace and click in the appropriate workspace. the circle will form as our mouse, the polygon you were sketching should be within this circle. To complete the polygon, drag to desired size and click to complete.