SolidWorks / CATIA Comparison

[Sparweb]

Hi,
I work in Aerospace, so understandably, I should be learning CATIA. There are no CATIA courses offered in my city (I've checked), so I'm thinking of taking a Solidworks course instead.
Both are developed by 3DS Dassault Systems, therefore does some relation exist between SW and CATIA? Follow the link

http://www.3ds.com/en/home.asp

to see what I mean.

Hopefully I haven't offended any purists with the question, but can I jump from one to the other without starting from scratch?

BTW, I have 3-4000 hours on AutoCAD, (2D, 3D, renderings, etc.) so the drafting part is no sweat, it's speaking the language that I need to learn.

Thanks in advance,


STF

 

[TheTick]

I work on SW for an automotive tier2 supplier with a lot of CATIA tier1.

No comparison as far as complexity of interface.

However, if you are transitioning from 2.5D autoCAD, I recommend jumping into 3D parametric solid design any way you can. Learning SW will expose you to those basic concepts, as would SolidEdge or Inventor. In my experience, people with good geometry and modeling skills can transition between CAD systems readily.

If the ladies don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.

 

[ShaggyPE]

I'll give you my background and you can take my advice for what its worth.

I have never used Catia, Autodesk Inventor, Pro-E.

I have used Solidworks exclusively but started out on Autocad. I also used I-deas during a quarter in school a few years ago. Moving from Autocad to solidworks wasn't that difficult. I just realized that I never wanted to use Autocad again. The move to I-deas was effortless.

I have worked with people who came from a Pro-E background. they were able to function on Solidworks within a week.

I am of the opinion that once you have learned a major solid modelling package, the downtime that you will experience when attempting to learn another one is minimal. They all perform the same function. They just have different looking icons.

 

[JNR]

We are in the aerospace business and also have to deal with CATIA in addition to SolidWorks. I would not say by any means that all the large aerospace companies use CATIA. Some do, some don't. For example, Boeing Long Beach use UG (they are ex-MD). Most of the smaller companies do not. Then there is the issue of whether they are using Version 4 or Version 5 - I don't beleive everyone has moved up. We actually have two CATIA seats (both version 4 and version 5 - which are quite different). We really only use them for conversions or when a customer insists on CATIA drawing. Note that literally means DRAWINGS - we still design and model in SW.

CATIA and SolidWorks have no similarity to eachother or common roots. infact I would not really classify CATIA as a truely parametric system. CATIA has been around and evolving for many years. SolidWorks was developed in mid 90's totally independently. SW was then purchased by DS. In fact DS have stated that they do not intend to even produce a custom converter, but that STEP is the recommended method. (Yeah, right....!) So we use CADVerter. It seems to work very well - and bear in mind we have some very complex geometry (including ugly surface topologies).

I agree with Shaggy18VW in that learning any modern 3D solids package that is reasonable capable would be a really good starting point. You should be able to pick up CATIA after that, but it is not as intiutive as SW and certainly not as Windows compliant! It also still has some wireframe/surface/B-rep type capabilities. So it is not quite as easy to learn but should not be to much of a challenge. Plus there are some additional basic concepts to deal with that are unique to CATIA. So I don't entirely agree with Shaggy's last two sentences but the basic idea of his last paragraph is good.

I guess my other comment would be if you are going to learn to use a solids package, you might as well go with the one which has most seats out there, is out-selling the others, is still increasing market share, etc. It is most likely to give you more job options along the way. So that would indicate SW is a good choice (where are they now - somewhere between 250k and 300k seats?)

Also the user community is strong for assistance, etc. and with so many intergrated partner products it is probably easier to get experience with additional application software with a minimum of learning time.

Good Luck.

3/4 of all the Spam produced goes to Hawaii - shame that's not true of SPAM also.......

 

[Sparweb]

Thanks guys,

You've confirmed some suspicions, and shed light on other facts I didn't know. Actually, you guys sound so optimistic that I now wonder if I need to fork out my dough at all, if it's so easy!

For its popularity, I don't expect I can go wrong with SW. A weakness of CATIA is affordability, since the package seems to be much more expensive than SW, which goes for 5000$CDN, according to the quote I got today. The college promised to deduct the price of my course from the software package, too. Having never experienced parametric modelling, yet, I can't relate to other things you guys mentioned. Frustration with recalcitrant models, yes, I can relate to that (I did mention 1000's of hour on AutoCAD, didn't I?)

By the way, TheTick, from your other posts I recall you're a Yankee, but your signature lines are full of Canuck culture. Am I (ahem) rush-ing to a conclusion here? Are you an avid duct-taper as your new signature implies?


STF

 

[JNR]

Very true. However to be entirely fair, on the upside CATIA has a bunch of stuff that SW (and the others too) do not. Not that you would really be using a lot of it if you were just doing training or college work - some of it is a bit specialized. But then it used to go for an order of magnitude more clams than it does today (eh?) ;-) Amazing what competition will do. Don't ya just love market driven capitolism when it works like it's supposed to?

3/4 of all the Spam produced goes to Hawaii - shame that's not true of SPAM also.......