Catia V5 Review

Over Spring 2012 and Summer 2012, I worked at a company that utilized Catia V5 for Computer Aided Design software.  The main reason that the company used this software was to align with their main customer, Boeing.  Boeing commercial used the same software release, and it allowed any projects that dealt with them to be submitted directly to the them without converting files into different formats.

However, the project that I worked on had Boeing Army as a customer, and they used Catia V4 as CAD software.  Now, it should be safe to assume that one would be able to send the V5 files to them, and they should be able to read them.  This is not true however, and every file for the project had to be converted to different file formats and sent to the them.  This lack of "interchangeability" between the two releases of the same software caused a massive waste of resources.  Not only was it an initial burden, but each time a change was made, the files had to be converted again.

Now don't get me wrong, Catia V5 is a perfectly capable CAD package, and has many capabilities that should come with this type of software.  The program has the ability to build parts in the same conventional way as most CAD packages such as using extrusions, pockets, revolves, grooves, sweeps, holes, and much more.  The software also has the ability to create parts using generative surface design which is a major plus for complex parts.

However, the sketcher in Catia is not very user-friendly.  In my prior experience with CAD software, I find Pro Engineer's sketcher much more user-friendly.  Comparing the two, Catia doesn't have many automatic constraints that are generated during the process of creating a sketch.  Whereas, Pro Engineer has many automatic constraints.  I find it useful to have the automatic constraints as it helps create sketches in less time.  If a user needs to manually constrain every aspect of a sketch, it can greatly increase the time it takes to complete the creation of a part.

Catia Part Design

Noting flaws in the part design, Catia creates multiple surfaces in areas that it is not necessary. Instances include but are not limited to:  holes, new pockets that are flush with existing surfaces, and sketches that have flush lines.  This creates havoc during the tool programming phase for manufacturing.  The software used to program the machine tools recognizes these surfaces as separate entities and can prevent the programmers from being able to correctly create a program to machine the part.

The assembly design in Catia also has multiple issues.  Each time a detail part from an assembly has changes made to it, the constraints in the next higher assemblies are usually broken.  This is to be expected with major changes.  However, with Catia, minor changes such as an update to dimensions in a sketch or of a feature would break constraints.  This is very annoying as the assemblies need constant updating with the parts or the parts will not be fully constrained and could possibly move.

Catia Assembly

Also, creating symmetric assemblies in Catia can become a cumbersome   One specific case involves large assemblies using a high number of fasteners.  If the symmetric detail parts are created with links to the opposite side in order to keep updates made to the opposite part, the assembly becomes difficult to make.  The assembly creation usually allows a person to reuse patterns used in the detail parts to constrain multiple parts at once.  For example, if a part has multiple holes created as a pattern of an original hole, a person can constrain one rivet and use the reuse pattern option to constrain the rest of the rivets in the patterned holes.  This breaks down in the symmetric assembly though.  The symmetric detail part becomes a "dumb" solid with no patterns from the original part.  Therefore, the reuse patterns option is useless in this case, and a person could have to constrain hundreds of parts.

Although Catia V5 is a usable CAD system, it is a system that could be improved to gain better efficiency and be more user-friendly.  The inefficiency and problems of the program would cause me to choose a different CAD software if I were to start a new project.