How many of you use Catia?

[Rich05]

Does it blow away SW? I have seen the interface it looks backdated. Just wondering your impressions.

[Loadedagain]

i work for a company that was recently acquired by mercedes. we have used pro-e forever and will be adopting catia over the next year as it is mercedes gold standard. from what i have seen thus far it appears to be a solid, clean package for working with shared design.

in my personal life i run solidworks2007 with solidcam2007 to make parts on my home cnc mill. would i ever consider trying to nip a copy of catia to replace this? hell no! the solidworks/cam package works too well for me!

[voltsandbolts]

You could ask GliderGider I think he told me he uses it at work.

[JerryFlyGuy]

Catia is the Gold standard for many larger manufacturing companies. Boeing, Airbus [which has been a negative in the news recently] It's owned and produced by the same company who makes solidworks [Dassault Systems] It's more powerful in doing large assembly design [imagine a 747 w/ all the fastners and plumbing in it!] as well as free form modeling of those aerodynamic and organic shapes. I've never used it but I've heard it has something like 1700 commands or something.. [Sw has a few hundred??]

Not for the faint of heart

[Donkey Hotey]

I own a seat of SW 2006 and I'm using the current version of Catia at work (V16? 18? I can't remember). Catia is just Solidworks on drugs. Catia does virtually the same things with the same buttons (you just have to figure out what the differences in the icons are--same function, different icon).

The problem is that the Catia terminology absolutely sucks and the help files are even worse.

• Product? Oh, you mean assembly.
• Rapid instantiation? WTF is that? Oh...a component pattern.
• Section cut (viewing)? Try it in Catia. What a bunch of idiots. It's a simple function in Solidworks. Catia? It's miserable (and I need it often).
• Irregular section cuts in an assembly view (drawing)? Fahgeddaboutit. The Catia method is so bad that I don't think I could duplicate it again.
• Multiple threaded holes? Solidworks: click on any face of the part, any angle, and it places the holes in a single operation. Catia? One hole at a time. It's funny that Dassault is supposed to be an aircraft company. Ya' think you'd ever have to put a row of fasteners on a curved surface? You know...like along an aircraft door or panel? Catia can't flippin' do it without placing each hole, one at a time.

I get into this argument with the Catia proponents pretty regularly. They refuse to even consider that a $6K seat of Solidworks can do everything their precious Catia can do. For the few things that Catia might do better (I still haven't found anything but I'll concede that--like bigfoot--it might be out there ) Solidworks will have saved you so much time up to that point that you can afford to exert a little extra effort.

I swear there are some French programmers who are laughing their butts off for all of the lame stuff they put into the English-version interface.

[Rich05]

very interesting. I was thinking of Catia for surfacing work. Would Rhino would smoke Catia?

[tobyaxis]

very interesting. I was thinking of Catia for surfacing work. Would Rhino would smoke Catia?

Catia is Parametric which means that you have a design tree where you can edit all the geometry in a single Design or a Complete Assembly.

Rhino is not Parametric but is more of a free form Organic Solid Modeler. A lot of CAD users refer to this as a Dumb Solid Modeler because there is no editing capability.

All CAD Systems have their place in the world, but Catia is one of the top 5.