catia v solidworks

Nov 18, 2003 2 Replies

just a question here because i sometimes see catia kind of mentioned



i was recently enquiring about catia pricing around 7.5k here in the uk for a system similar to what solidworks does as, i know the limitations drawbacks advantage etc of solidworks I would like to know if catia suffers from any misgivings or advantages



admittedly I now have no need for sw office rendering and animation or the 3d publisher one 3 of the main reasons solidworks was used in the first place so the question really is why people arent switching to catia which is supposedly the big bruv of solidworks.



now i dont know a lot on the subject of catia as having never been exposed to it but is it better worse more stable its just i havent seen that much on the subject ,no bad or good reports



it seems the price of sw 6.5k for office is something i wouldnt want to pay as 3 of its main attractions a rapidly becoming past their sell by date i wouldnt switch back to pro e because of the current wildfire or lack of fire and more of the wild problem so would i be better paying slightly more for a system



see this is the prob is it better i cant put "paying slightly more for a better system" as i just dont know if the core of catia is better than the core of solidworks



what i do now know is i dont want the fluff that comes with sw anymore as i have infinitely better tools for these tasks



any pointers


All I know about Catia is hearsay, but I would expect it to handle complex surfaces and large assemblies better, since it is used by folks like Boeing. I believe it used to have a fairly lame user interface, but it seems that it is much better now.

The big question is "what do you want to do with it?" Ask the Catia folks to give you a demonstration. If it looks promising, put together a benchmark and see how it compares to SolidWorks. If that looks good, try to get an evaluation copy for a month. Report back to us at each stage and earn our undying gratitude.

Adopted brother, with no blood shared. Catia has traditionally been sold into big corporations, SolidWorks into smaller companies. A lot of the people who have SolidWorks now probably wouldn't even think about buying Catia, assuming it is too expensive. Perhaps we should reconsider.

I'm hoping that someone in the group who knows a lot more than I do can enlighten us.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems

Mike

Catia 5 is "VERY" modular. They even have their surfacing capabilities split into at least 3, if not four $eperate modules. By the time you buy enough modules to do any useful work, you'll probably end up spending 20K. I'd be willing to bet that 7.5K won't let you do much more than single part solids, and viewing.

Regards

Mark

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