Catia

[whiteriver]

Anybody out there use Catia. Looks like a nice complete package. Does it all. Cad, cam, fea, etc.
How much for the complete package?

Donny

[CrazyRonny]

I take some formation on Catia, and yes it's a good integrate package, it can do almost anything but it's one of the higher price software, I don't know the exact cost but only really big company could afford it.

[musicmkr]

I've used it but i wasn't all that impressed. To me it was a very inefficient GUI, it was all mouse clicking, and no keyboard interaction. (Yeah, I am a huge fan of command line interaction, on screen buttons are the easy slow way out)

The newer version is available for Win 2000, so you don't have to go buy a Silicone Graphics box to run it. Thats great since getting the hardware to run it was a big chunk of the money you had to pay. When I bought it Catia only supported one video card, and that cost around a thousand dollars. If I remember correctly you can't buy Catia, you have to lease it. The initial payment was somewhere around $25,000 and i think it was like $1000 per year after that. You have to pay to get a code so that you can unlock the program for another year.

The actual software is alright as far as what it can do, but you can get set up for much less money using a couple different programs. The part and assembly modeling are no better than the new Mechanical Desktop. The FEA package isn't as good as stand alone programs like ANSYS, and just a step above MechDesktop's. If you're going to spend that amount of money I would put mine on getting Pro-E.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Catia is made by Dassault systems based in france. I was never very happy with customer service, or support.

[Albigger]

I use CATIA V5 where I work, and it is definately nice. The good and bad thing about CATIA, is that is has almost endless options, so that it is totally customizable to the user. This can be good or just plain aggravating at times.

There are definately cheaper ways to get the same results, and mainly our company was 'forced' to support this software because larger customers of ours require it.

I have heard it can range anywhere from $20,000 to over $100,000, depending on the packages (or modules) that you get, from basic part/assembly design, to drafting, NC machining, FEA, composite part design, etc...

I have never preferred pro-E much, mostly for the user interface, but would put it up there with CATIA as far as being powerful. I also never liked the FEA in Pro-E, but I havent' used the latest versions. Solidworks is a good/cheap way to get 90% of what most users want, and there are certainly other solutions as well.

Hope some of that helps.

[ty1295]

I used Catia 5 years ago also.

Nice software once you learn how to use it. Has a steep learning curve to understand how to get around. Once you learn though, i have yet to see anything as powerful.

Like mentioned it CAN do everything.

I have also heard the price puts it out of any company not on Fortune 500 list though.

Most other packages will read and export to Catia now.

Jeff

[DAB_Design]

They use Catia where I work. They have (to my knowledge) 5-6 seats of v4 and at least one V5.

I know it's expensive. I'll probe a little and try to get a price.