How large of an assembly can Catia open? 6

[Standing]

We are having trouble opening large assemblies using SolidWorks and are thinking about getting a couple seats of Catia.

We talked to a Catia salesmen and he said the number one reason people go to Catia is: “Opening large assemblies and Catia is very stable”. Is this true and how large of an assembly can you open. Does your Catia ever crash?


Bradley
SolidWorks Pro 2008 x64, SP3.0
PDMWorks Workgroup, SolidWorks BOM,
Dell XPS Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU
3.00 GHz, 5 GB RAM, Virtual memory 12577 MB,
nVidia Quadro FX 3400
Use SolidWorks BOM
e-mail is Lotus Notes

 

[1oldcaduser]

Yes Catia can open large assemblies but you have to ensure you have suitable hardware. Where I work we use HP workstations running Windows XP pro. I am not at work at the moment so I can't give you the spec. I have opened a about 75% of a complete car with no problem. Catia allows you to open large assemblies in CGR mode for visualization only.
As for crashing it is much more stable now (I am on release 16) although it does crash occasionally for no apparent reason. You can get a warm start to bring back the previous the automatic store although we have no warm start where I work.

Salesmen will always tell you want they think you want to hear and every system is the dogs b0llcks to the guy trying to sell you it.

 

[tuzoenduro]

I love salesman lingo. Yeah Catia is stable, but it does crash, you gotta appreciate the "Click Ok to terminate" popup window that does nothing but remind you that there is nothing else you can do and if you didn't save often you're in for more work.
but I agree wit 1old... you need good certified hardware, go over to DS's site and check out what you need to make CATIA run properly.

 

[DBezaire]

What is the assembly size in MB that you are trying to open. We have some tool assemblies that range 1100 parts and 1GB of info. These users have Dell Precision 690 with 16GB ram, they rarely exceed 5GB ram. Catia does crash - it's software. Stability is directly related to good practices.

 

[Standing]

Thanks for the replies.
Our Assembly is 40 meg, the whole folder were the models are kept is only 3.5 gig. That includes drawings.

Bradley
SolidWorks Pro 2008 x64, SP3.0
PDMWorks Workgroup, SolidWorks BOM,
Dell XPS Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU
3.00 GHz, 5 GB RAM, Virtual memory 12577 MB,
nVidia Quadro FX 3400
Use SolidWorks BOM
e-mail is Lotus Notes

 

[drewboy23]

Agree 100% with the comments from the people above. I open entire BIW and Chassis for vehicles with mostly no problems. But only from my local machine, across the network it seems to crash more often. It also depends on some of the files. I had 700+ files opening one time and it came down to one corrupt file keeping it from opening.

 

[Standing]

This is good information to help with management.
A star for each of you.

Bradley
SolidWorks Pro 2008 x64, SP3.0
PDMWorks Workgroup, SolidWorks BOM,
Dell XPS Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU
3.00 GHz, 5 GB RAM, Virtual memory 12577 MB,
nVidia Quadro FX 3400
Use SolidWorks BOM
e-mail is Lotus Notes

 

[itsmyjob]

Since R18SP4, it looks like DS is accepting VISTA 64 bit.

It might be something you would like to know before you buy a 32 bit system for CATIA...

Eric N.
indocti discant et ament meminisse periti ​

 

[ferdo]

Hi

Here you can find how to manage big assemblies

http://www.vought.com/ntcoe/data/presentation_zuefeldt_021805.pdf

Regards
Fernando

 

[Azrael]

I did some testing for a company recently regarding large assemblies. They are in the same situtation with SW, they had assemblies in SW that were on the limit, if you did anything more it crashed.

The large assembly management was much better in Catia then in SW, regarding stability I can't say it wont crash but since R12 I think I have like 1-2 crashes in a year, no so far in R18. I even tried something DS calls LA&CD, some kind of plugin for smarteam that gives you cgr's on assembly level and that you can load the detailed assemblies when wanted, but that was over kill for this case.

An interesting thing for you could be that SW can read and write cgr.

I can add that I used similar hardware HP XW6200 6Gb ram and XP64, note that for large assemblies quick discs are important, preferably striped scsi configuration

 

[tuzoenduro]

Another thing, I second drewboy's comment on opening stuff stored on your computer vs. pulling it from the network. We tipically work completely on the network but whenever we have to convert file types (catpart->igs, .model->catpart, etc) it is always better to store it on local and then do the conversion, otherwise it either takes for ages or CATIA eventually freezes (depending on the size of the files).

 

[ferdo]

Hi,

You can load huge assemblies, even in a network if you know how to handle them (thats why I consider that presentation a very useful document).

In my experience, you can load even a whole aircraft section structure and few ATA chapters as well. This is done more quickly if you will do it with a macro and not in the usual way.

Its true also that on UNIX platform CATIA is more stable than Win (in my opinion) but under UNIX the possibilities of doing your own automation tools are not so well developed (no vba).

It depends also of what version of CATIA you will run...

Anyway, its good to check also

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/applications/plm/catiav5/sysreq/hwsysreq.html

maybe your present hardware its not so good for CATIA, otherwise you will have to invest some money also in hardware....



Regards
Fernando