Creo to Catia

[cdown]

I am about to start a new project which has to be done on Catia V5. Now having very little experience of Catia but as a long term user of Creo & Pro/E what sort of transition should I expect?

Has anyone else has to do this for a project?  Would a training course be needed or would a few good youtube videos be enough to get started?

Also is the admin / file system similar.

Any sort of ideas or help would be greatly recieved

[DeanLong]

Colin,

You can think of Catia V5 functionality as a mix of SolidWorks and Creo. The sketcher is similar to Creo with regard to actual sketching of elements and dimensioning. Icons galore. It has flavors of old non Intent Manager from earlier versions of Pro/E. You might find this the most exasperating thing if you like Creo's ease of sketching. The sketch "plane" setup is somewhat like SolidWorks...I.E. pick a flat "something" and then select sketch.

Catia is a bit clunky when it come to setting up the feature you create. Again, it reminds me of WildFire and earlier Pro/E versions. You will find yourself creating the "stuff" that will be used to create the feature. Not necessarily for simple extrudes. But more involved features like sweeps, blends etc...unlike Creo where the items are "in" the feature creation and the Boolean happens as part of the feature. Make sense?

If you are surfacing it's very much like Creo in the sense that it's curve based. Good curves makes good surfaces. If you have built surfaces in Creo with merges then you will have a good idea how Catia requires it's surfaces to be constructed. You will merge them in the end and create a solid. Like Creo you can create a surface model and then "solidify" in the end and/or create from a solid in the beginning and Boolean to the end of the model. All very similar.

All the rest is click order, mouse buttons and finding the feature creation/inputs in the flyouts. Keep in mind Catia is as "deep" as Creo with regard to functionality and finesse.

Good luck...

[cdown]

Dean,

Many thanks for the reply, I've used Pro/E since release 17/18 so do remember the old intent manager. I'm not to concerned with the modelling side of things it is more of the assembly management side of things regarding large assembly management, are there things like simplified reps, skeleton models & top down design.

I'm guessing that these features will be the most different.

[StephenW]

I've never used Catia but thinking about learning large assembly management, simp reps, skeletons, top down design...in pro/e...not something I would expect to find good info on youtube. Maybe to make simple parts and assemblies, youtube would get you started.

[RonSt.Pierre]

In my opinion,

get as much training as possible. One session in modeling plus any modules, then another in drawing.

These are two different breeds of software - Catia is a hybrid modeler (free form and parametric) while creo is strictly parametric.

YouTube might help, but I doubt it.

oh, and keep your mind open and don't think "creo"

[cdown]

Ron,

many thanks, I've learnt not to think Creo but sometimes it's hard...

as I have said to Dean it's more on the assembly side I am worried about.

[DeanLong]

Ron,

I was pitched V5 when it was first introduced to the Automotive world back in 93/94/95. The "pitch" was V5 was "better" than Pro/E because it was a Hybrid Modeler, either parametric (constrained) or not (kumbaya). They played to the hype that Pro/E prevented "ease of data creation" by being too rigid. In other words, Dassault was playing on the complaints (lack of skill actually) of people new to Pro/E that it was too difficult and restrictive because it made users constrain sketches 100% before it would solve. They even went as far as to say that Catia was faster because it solved it's math simultaneously where as Pro/E solved it sequentially. HUH? While I never followed up on this claim, I wonder if V5 was able to multi-task dual processors back then and that is what they were saying. Although we did side by side speed tests and Pro/E beat V5 every time. Anyway, all this was way before Pro's Intent Manager was introduced. Remember AutoDim? That was PTC's first counter punch to the Hybrid Modeling hype. Then along came Intent Manager and then Strong/Weak dims we have now. SDRC also played this same tune by saying "it doesn't matter....leave that geometry with no dimensions...our system is so much better than the others. Bunk! The reality of that pitch is V5 and SDRC (and even Creo) fail downstream if those items are left "floating" through the data cycle. Once customers got burned by this a couple times they changed their tune. We had clients back in the day that didn't allow unconstrained sketches/geometry in any of their data. They would not accept it unless it was locked down. The term Hybrid Modeling was nothing more than a sales pitch.

I agree Catia and Creo are a bit different...but not too much. Both require robust modeling techniques and common sense to create good models.

D

[RonSt.Pierre]

Dean,

Had the same experience with UG > now NX.

It was so split up that every module (gateway, base model, drafting, etc) had a n+three zero cost to them plus maintenance.

Hard to warrant the cost for each seat when at one time you could purchase a pc plus pro/e for 4 grand (oops, showed my age!)

Each software has their strengths and weaknesses. If you truely know how to use the tool, what ever it may be, one can overcome any deficiencies while capitalizing their strengths.

Ron

[DeanLong]

Talk about showing age...my first two licenses of Pro/E cost.....wait for it.....$22,500 EACH! That's not a typo.....

And the only machines fast enough to run those licenses cost.....wait for it.....$8,687 each. I still remember the numbers 21 years later as I remember having to pop a container of antacids that night after I wrote the check.

[RonSt.Pierre]

on a SPARC1 (not sparc10)

[StephenW]

I seem to remember (and with each gray hair grown, one memory goes with it) that we paid $25k for each seat (2 seats) and $25K for each computer (2) for a total of $100k. We had custom built Alpha workstatations, 233MHz RISC processors (that's not GHz) that included $6k graphics cards. Pentiums had just come out and the fastest one the market was 120MHz so our pro/e workstations screamed!!!!

The director of engineering asked about a month after spending all that $$$, soooooo, where's the first drawing? We turned out the crappiest casting drawing I had ever seen and released it so we could say we were producing product!!

[DeanLong]

That brought back some bad memories, Stephen.

[BenLoosli]

My first 2 seats of Unigraphics II V3 in 1987 with a 16MB VAX/GPX and 2-159MB drives plus a 5MB diskless GPX was ....just under $100K, which was the funding corporate approved for the setup. Yes that is correct MegaBytes, not GigaBytes!!

Prices vary depending on corporate contracts. One company I worked for had the price negotiated for Wildfire down to 10,500 per seat with Windchill included. We had a contractor deal in the contract where they could buy a seat for our corporate rate if they were designing parts for us. There was also an employee purchase price of 5K/seat if anyone could afford it.

[RonSt.Pierre]

Oh wow... a VAX!

I remember running Medusa on that!

[StephenW]

Thinking about the price then, I think we paid Caterpillar negotiated price. The place I worked for then was a contract manufacturer for CAT. I remember that PTC salesman who sold the big package to CAT retired on commissions shortly afterwards.

[dschenken]

Check DASSAULT: CATIA products Forum - Eng-Tips

[rmcboaty]

well, your mapkeys won't work.

catia really can be clunky compared to any new-ish edition of creo (including wf).

its strengths are also not in drawing creation but surfaces. the drawings are not very well developed imo (show dim from model is a godsend in creo for example).

there is also a lack of development for the past few years (UI, general usability, features etc.; at least basic part-asm-drw), so you can expect to learn visual basic macros (they are often needed even for BOM as the default interface is not very good) to automate various things.

the vb macro dev community is actually quite big with catia (forementioned eng-tips for example).

You can think of Catia V5 functionality as a mix of SolidWorks and Creo.

maybe 6 years ago, especially for solidworks.

wf3 that i run at work is also better in part-asm-drw to catia (i've only had limited exposure to the latter though)