Just been on the MecSoft website, and AlibreCAM seems to have disappeared from there. Anyone know if it's been Discontinued again?
Is it because Alibre is offering it's own solution in the form of Alibre Workshop?! or maybe they are still catching up with the Alibre HOOPS changes! Give MecSoft a call and ask them what the situation is.
Just before posting on here, I sent an email to the UK reseller asking the same question, so just waiting for a reply from them.
No reply from the UK Reseller!! But from MecSoft :- Hello Nick, Yes, we have discontinued AlibreCAM and will not be releasing a new version this year. We will issue VisualCAD/CAM 2021 standalone license to customers on maintenance. The target release date for VisualCAD/CAM 2021 is February 12. Thank you,
That is a very bad news... AlibreCam is so efficient to work ! All the stand alone solution is useless... You lose all the CAM data each time you import a file ! The best with AlibreCam is to work with sketches directly. I hope Alibre team understand the problem, in small company each hour is precious...
Sigh... here we go again. Sometimes I think I should have just stayed with my Geomagic (which could import STL files) and the VisualCAM both supported with USB dongles which sat in an Ethernet based hub so I could run the software on various PCs. The moment Geomagic became Alibre again I lost the VisualCAM license as I went back to AlibreCAM and CAD. The scary thing is changing over to Fusion360 is probably guaranteed to have the same result in a year or so. I really don't know what to do.
The up side is I don't have to give them money for the yearly support subscription. Save that for a few years and I can afford to buy Fusion360 I guess.
Mecsoft's decision to discontinue ACAM has nothing to do with HOOPS nor Workshop, to my knowledge. They've already released a version on HOOPS. We do not have any business relationship with Mecsoft, nor have we since we restarted Alibre. We did work closely with them when requested to implement and help fix any issues. If you want them to continue to supply AlibreCAM, tell them. Ask for a refund, if you like.
Hmmm. That's not the impression I've had since Alibre came back from Geomagic and up until a month or so ago it was listed on their web site as one of the options. Now it's not. And there isn't a replacement so now AlibreCAD is just that? Only CAD? This sort of customer interaction is so dramatically different from the Alibre that I bought into 10 years ago. As I said above. Fusion 360 is looking more and more attractive. Especially since every time I mention Alibre on various forums all I get is replies that they are using Fusion360 and are really impressed with it. So why, when it's time to renew my support should I bother?
Mecsoft is a company completely unaffiliated with ours. The add-on provider section is full of such companies - non Alibre companies that have made add-ons. It has been so for years. We apologize if Mecsoft have decided to go another direction with their own product, but we can't affect it even if we wanted to. Mecsoft is not the only company that "works" with Alibre - several others have interop; some smart interop where things update when models change. We are looking into relationships with higher tier CAM providers for professional CAM integrations at the moment, though Alibre products are compatible with every CAM package on the market. We get that integrated is ideal, and are working towards another solution.
You can justify it any old way you want. It was called AlibreCAM not Mecsoft CAM. Had you not wanted that impression of association that would have been different. I just know I've been jacked around from Alibre licensing on line to a dongle with Geomagic and then a worthless dongle back to AlibreCAD. Same with AlibreCAM to a Mecsoft VisualCAM dongle and a worthless dongle as Alibre became independent again along with the change from Mecsoft VisualCAM (stand alone) to AlibreCAM (integrated). Note I still run 'Alibre'CAM so you may like to claim you have no affiliation but in fact you do. Otherwise the integration from Mecsoft wouldn't have happened. Mecsoft AlibreCAM has been part of Alibre for as long as I've owned it with the exception of the Geomagic period which also stuck it to your existing customer base. And looking at your web site it's clear, for the Expert version you currently list, that you don't even have an integrated CAM package (but you claim you are looking). So at least have the ethics to admit you've had a falling out with Mecsoft to the disadvantage of your customer base and stop trying to excuse yourself by listing generic add on programs as normal. You screwed up and you now have unhappy customers. I guess you think we're expendable. July 21st is when my support requires renewal and October is when my AlibreCAM support is over. What I will do then is currently up in the air. What will change is that Alibre will no longer be mentioned in postings on the various forums. Why bother. No customer loyalty. To say I'm disappointed with your response is a colossal understatement.
Mecsoft also has RhinoCAM. They also have VisualCAM for Solidworks. Neither of these products are part of the parent products. The same was true for AlibreCAM. We agree that the period where we did not own, nor make any decisions for, the Alibre product under the 3D Systems time was "non-customer-centric" to say the least. We had no control, nor ownership, during that that time. It was a different company. We also made it very clear upon reacquiring the company many years ago the status of various addons, including MecSoft - that we would focus on CAD and not try to so much be in the business of addon products. We have not had a falling out with Mecsoft. Companies decide to discontinue products for many reasons. We do not have a poor business relationship with Mecsoft. We've also listed all CAM partners that exist today from the beginning - no change has occurred there. We have done nothing that is antithetical to the direction we made clear many years ago. Alibre as a company makes Alibre Design and Alibre Atom3D. We, like many other CAD providers, have lots of addon partners. Addon partners, like all other companies, come and go over time, for many different reasons. Economics change, ownership changes, strategy changes. That's why we decided to only focus on ourselves. I'm just not sure how to respond to you wanting us to change something about Mecsoft's product that we have nothing to do with and haven't had anything to do with for almost 4 years. You can call us many things, but calling us "unloyal" is something I won't readily accept. You are currently talking to the CEO of the company. I'm ready to have a dialog with you. I want to do that and understand your point of view. Try that with Autodesk. I am happy to seriously consider what you're saying but it needs to be in fairness. I, and we, want to make you happy, but we can only do that insofar as we have the power to do so. We can't change what Mecsoft has done. Mecsoft product have not been part of the Alibre product line for almost half a decade. I think it is a little unfair to purport otherwise.
I bought and have paid maintenance for an integrated product that included CAM and that product was called AlibreCAM. I acknowledge that I have paid separately for the CAM portion knowing full well that it wasn't an Alibre Product. But had it been called VisualCAM from inside AlibreCAD perhaps I'd feel a bit better about it. I guess my point is that the moment AlibreCAM separated from AlibreCAD the product I thought I had changed. I still believe that AlibreCAD is better than Fusion360 and I completely disliked using VisualCAM during the Geomagic years. So now I feel like I'm being tossed out again just like the sale to Geomagic. And if AlibreCAM is just an add on from another manufacturer why is it that Mecsoft can't continue to provide the integrated software? Why is it they suddenly don't want to do that? They are earning a paltry $400 per year from me for maintenance, with a name change and otherwise what appears to be identical to VisualCAM but integrated into AlibreCAD. Perhaps I'm their only maintenance client? This evening I created a small part in AlibreCAD. Exported it as an stl and 3D printed it. This was the easiest and fastest way to test the concept. Next I pulled down the menu marked "AlibreCAM 2020" which again gave me the impression I was running an Alibre Supported and Integrated product. That it was written by someone else is irrelevant. It had your company name on the menu and the program. Now it becomes interesting. In the middle of doing something Alibre stopped. Completely. CAM and CAD and this wasn't the first time. Happens about once per month. To be safe I rebooted the PC. Ran AlibreCAD and interestingly my history of recent files was gone. Now it was probably AlibreCAM that choked. Ultimately after a lot of work (another 3D print would have finished by then) I was able to create the G-Code and run at test on the mill. Most of the issues I've had over the last year appear to be related to AlibreCAM but then it could also be that AlibreCAD is supplying crap to the AlibreCAM side. So if I go yet again into the stand alone VisualCAM package and it blows up like it did this evening Mecsoft can point the finger at AlibreCAD and AlibreCAD can say it's not our problem since Mecsoft VisualCAM is a stand alone package. And I'm the one left in the middle with both sides pointing the finger at each other. Which is interestingly since that's what it already sounds like. To say "Mecsoft product have not been part of the Alibre product line for almost half a decade. I think it is a little unfair to purport otherwise." is a bit disingenuous. Since the repurchase and branding of Geomagic back into Alibre, the menu and tabs have all used the Alibre name. Were you being realistic about your lack of connection you would have relaunched AlibreCAM as some other name. But you didn't. So as a customer I don't care about your fine print or the lack of a contract with Mecsoft. And Mecsoft is just as guilty for the misrepresentation. In either case it's a misrepresentation. And that's what I'm ticked off about. And the change to non integrated CAM.
I mean I kind of understand your point, but again the notion that "we would have relaunched AlibreCAM" implies we have anything to do with the sale, development, or support of that product. We have not been involved with any of that for quite a few years. I very much doubt you are the only maintenence client. As I said, businesses refocus, shift, reprioritize, downsize, etc all the time. I'm not going to hypothesize about Mecsoft's situation. You would need to talk to Mecsoft about bugs and freezes in their product, as well as the availability in general. We just have nothing to do with their product aside from providing them development support when they request it.
