Solidworks Vs. CATIA
Anybody is familar with Solidworks + CATIA?i will like to know the difference & strong features of both.
In concept they are both the same. Mechanical design software. Part, Assembly and Drafting (2D). SolidWorks is designed for the small to medium size company and is generally meant for the product and machine design industry.
CATIA is mainly made for the Automotive and Aerospace. It has many specialized modes (called workbenches) that focus on a specific application (Composites, NC, Ergonomics, etc...)
They are both own by Dassault systemes. SolidWorks starts at a 3rd of the price of CATIA and is good value for money. But, when you get into the high-end class A surfacing and the like, CATIA is the better choice. I found SW more userfriendly, but Catia is more powerful. I put Catia and Unigraphics in the same cup.Very very powerful software packages.Not the most user friendly but certainly designed for auto/ship/aero industries.I have found SW to be very powerful and very user friendly.SW does have composite capabilities in 09 now.
What do you need to do? in the world, there are only two (product lifecycle management) PLM complete solutions, Catia & Siemens NX. They do everything in product lifecycle by their own, starting CAD, CAE, CAM, PDM, to the collaboration platform.
Other companies are just selling a product/products of PLM. Or they need add-ons to "form" a complete solution. Broken links/failed updates/Duplicated files are often found. This is a critical defeat that most big companies cannot tolerate when building a big design. The cost of reworks and the penalty fee due to project delay are higher than the investment on softwares.
But if we just focus on CAD with some surfacing commands, Solidworks is a good choice since its price is much lower than catia's.
be careful that SW & Catia files are not exchangable. if one day we want to upgrade from SW to cata, all old SW files will become DUMP solids/surfaces & feature trees will be lost under catia environment. Today's Catia has been very different. Today's CAD has been very different. We are talking about the whole design process, instead of commands.
Looking at this demo, we can see the direction. Keep in mind that Dassault owns Catia and Solidworks.They aquired solidworks some time ago but they still are different platforms.I think we are slowly seeing SW adopt the V6 platform, at least in some of the peripherals.
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