Expiring MCAD Deals: VX Innovator 9/4, Alibre 9/29

Update 9/9/09: VX Innovator is now $295 (Americas, India, Africa) until September 30, 2009.  Check here for my latest MCAD news.

Since I’ve been posting a lot about affordable Mechanical CAD software, here’s an update on two great deals:

• Alibre’s $99 offer for Design Standard V11.2 ends on September 29, 2009; also on sale for $99 are Alibre Translate and Alibre Training Bundle.  The maintenance contract is still $299, and includes the upgrade to V12 (due on 9/29/09).
• Time to give some attention to VX Innovator: it’s on sale for $195 until September 4, 2009 for Americas, India, and Africa (with a note that price will increase to $295 — we’ll see if that’s a permanent price cut).

I’ ve been playing with Innovator for the past couple days, and will probably buy it, too.  Some initial comments:

• I’ve had problems installing it on two XP systems, but did get it to install on a Vista (yuck!) system.
• There’s not much about it on the web.  I’ve tried searching for VX topics, and had a hard time coming up with useful results;  there’s much more information available on Alibre and CoCreate.
• I was able to get it do some basic stuff without reading the manual, but with a fair amount of fiddling; overall, I’d say it’s not too difficult to use.
• It can do some things Alibre can’t do, and works in a very different manner (which is good — if it was very similar to Alibre, Solidworks, Solid Edge, etc I wouldn’t be interested).

BTW, I’m not interested in running cracked copies of software (e.g. Solidworks).  I’m interested in using software that’s affordable for anyone to use commercially, and I think that companies that produce good software should be rewarded.

Related posts:

1. Mechanical CAD, Special Deals, and Me
2. The SolidWorks World Effect? Alibre’s Lower Prices, VX 50% Sale
3. Viewing STEP files with Alibre Design Xpress
4. Alibre Design Xpress 11 won’t import STEP files
5. Alibre’s $99 Deal Is Good for PCB Design