Paul,
CATIA V5 is a one stop shop for design, analysis, simulation, and nc programming that was developed mainly for the Aerospace industry. You can check out IBM's website and see if they still offer a 30 day trail version of CATIA for you to try at home. If you are looking to purchase this software might I suggest Solidworks, CATIA's younger brother. Actually Solidworks was purchased by Dassault and became the base which CATIA V5 was developed on. The last time I checked a copy of Solidworks was running around $5K plus annual license fee's.
Hope this answered your question, if not let me know.
Al |