Catia V5 vs. V6 1

[BlakeShellman]

Greetings...
...sorry if this question has been asked before but I'm a new member of this forum trying to find out info about Catia.

I've been a long time user of Unigraphics or NX as its called these days and decided that maybe it's about time I learned about Catia.

From what I see Catia is offering both V5 and V6 versions simultaneously. This seems odd to me. Can someone explain why? What are the differences? Why would someone want to stay with V5 if V6 has been out for quite awhile? Are there major differences between the two as far as functionality and how to work within the two.

Thanks in advance....Blake

 

[catiajim]

V6 is brand new, and not completely ready for prime time. When they introduced V5 back 10 years ago (12 actually), it took them 2-3 years before it was functional and stable enough for the mainstream production users.

While V6 uses the same graphics engine as V5, and thus the interface is virtually identical, the back end processes are completely different. V6 is based entirely on a database PLM Structure, and creating the business processes to get this to work in a production environment will take a lot of thought (at least for large enterprises).

Better than all of this, they still offer and support V4. Technically, it's still supported until 12/31/2011, I suspect that they will extend that date (again). V4 had a radically different graphics engine than V5, and migrating data from V4 to V5 is very difficult. Many companies still have not made the jump.

 

[BlakeShellman]

Thanks for the response to my first post. One more question:

Is there a big difference in how to create solid model designs between V5 and V6? That is if I took a class in Catia will the things that I learned apply (for the most part) to Catia?

Thanks again....Blake

 

[DBezaire]

There are many similar icons in the presentations i have seen. I think the transition for modeling will not be too painful.

 

[BlakeShellman]

Thanks all...of course in the last question I meant to refer to V5 and V6 respectively but you've figured that out.

I'm going to start my search for training.

Blake

 

[ewh]

Apparently V6 is just a little too "new".

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/06/23/chrysler’s-engineering-software-shift/

"Good to know you got shoes to wear when you find the floor." - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[Azrael]

I had the chance to test V6 and Catiajim it is 2 years now so I found it very stable a much more competent especially in the so called VPM layer. What I found is that some exotic workbenches are not converted yet but for mechanical design all is there already.

So to the original question, modeling is not so different so what you know from V5 you can be used in V6, only some method related differences regarding skeleton modeling where you in V6 don't need a separate part, you can add geometry to a product. I checked the trainings available and there is one V5 to V6 transition, a two day course with main focus on the VPM layer, how to find and navigate, the only modeling covered are skeleton, constraints and V5 import.

 

[catiajim]

Chrysler is not changing because they want to. Chrysler is now owned by Fiat, and Fiat is a UG house. Fiat has told Chrysler that they WILL convert to UG.

The biggest problem that I see with V6 is building and defining all of the peripheral processes, especially the process of sending data to your supply chain. All the DS Demo's show the supplier logging into the OEM's database. They have obviously never had to deal with a large corporate Data Security group. There is NO WAY that most Data Security groups are going to allow outside suppliers to log into their system with equipment not owned and controlled by the corporation.

I also worry about the migration of our 1.5TB of data from VPM. They tell us there is a dedicated tool for this, but I need to see it actually work before I'll be totally comfortable.