Getting Started

Start up Alibre Design or Alibre Design Xpress and create a new, empty part. Then from the Windows Start menu, browse to

All Programs > plans.theFrankes.com > Point Import Wizard for Alibre Design
or
All Programs > CodeCreations > Point Import Wizard for Alibre Design

You should see a screen similar to this. (Except if you haven't yet registered, you'll also see a picture of the boy who will benefit from your product registration.) IMPORTANT NOTE: The screen shots in this tutorial were taken before a change in the user interface. Details about this change can be found on this thread in the support forum.

This window shows you the parts you currently have open in Alibre Design sessions, as well as the design planes and sketches for each part. For this example, select the XY-Plane in the Sketch or Plane box (you may need to expand some of the tree nodes), and enter the five X,Y coordinates shown below. Ensure that Points is selected in Import Points As, and that the Units box shows Centimeters (cm), as show here.

We're using very simple coordinates in these examples, so it's important to note that Point Import Wizard accepts decimal numbers with an approximate range of +/-1.5e-45 to +/-3.4e38. Also you can import hundreds or thousands of points at a time, and if the processor gets bogged down with extremely large imports, you can easily break down the task into smaller batches because the tool can import any number of sets of points, lines, or spline into a single sketch.

Now click Import, and you should see a small window appear that tells you haw many points were imported, as well as what the minimum and maximum X and Y values were. For very large sets of data, this can be used as a sanity check. For example, if I know my part should only be about five centimeters square, then the Max Y value of 19 should raise a red flag.

If you switch over to your Alibre Design session, you'll see that a new sketch has been added that is based on the XY-Plane, and that it not contains the five points you imported (first illustration below). (You may need to edit or activate the sketch in order to see the points.) Similarly, you'll see that Sketch<1> has also been added to the Point Import Wizard Sketch or Plane box, as shown in the second screen shot below.