--- title: CATIA Reviews meta_title: 'CATIA Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 255 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how CATIA works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.2 review_count: 255 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-04' parent_category: name: CAD url: https://www.g2.com/categories/cad --- # CATIA Reviews **Vendor:** Dassault Systemes **Category:** [Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD) Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/mechanical-computer-aided-design-mcad) **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 255 ## About CATIA CATIA is a comprehensive software suite developed by Dassault Systèmes, designed to facilitate the entire product development process from conceptualization to manufacturing. It integrates advanced 3D modeling, simulation, and collaboration tools, enabling users to design, analyze, and manage complex products and systems efficiently. CATIA's intuitive interface and robust capabilities support a wide range of industries, including aerospace, automotive, construction, and consumer goods, fostering innovation and enhancing product quality. Key Features and Functionality: - 3D Modeling and Design: Offers parametric and non-parametric modeling tools for creating precise and complex geometries, accommodating both mechanical and surface design needs. - Simulation and Analysis: Provides integrated simulation capabilities to test and validate product performance under real-world conditions, reducing the need for physical prototypes. - Systems Engineering: Supports model-based systems engineering (MBSE) to manage complex product architectures, ensuring consistency across mechanical, electrical, and software components. - Collaboration Tools: Facilitates real-time collaboration among multidisciplinary teams through a unified platform, enhancing communication and decision-making processes. - Knowledge Management: Enables the capture and reuse of design knowledge and best practices, promoting standardization and efficiency across projects. Primary Value and User Solutions: CATIA addresses the challenges of modern product development by providing a unified environment that integrates design, simulation, and collaboration tools. This integration allows organizations to accelerate innovation, improve product quality, and reduce time-to-market. By supporting a wide range of disciplines and industries, CATIA helps users manage complex product lifecycles, ensure design accuracy, and foster collaboration across global teams, ultimately leading to more sustainable and impactful customer experiences. ## CATIA Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users praise CATIA for its **robust 3D modeling and advanced surface design** , essential for automotive and complex shape work. (3 reviews) - Users value the **flexibility and power** of CATIA for accurate and precise design reviews in automotive engineering. (3 reviews) - Users find CATIA to be **user-friendly** , facilitating straightforward learning and efficient evaluation of models. (3 reviews) - Users value the **ease of use and flexibility** of CATIA, appreciating its powerful design capabilities for complex shapes. (3 reviews) - Users appreciate the **flexibility and power** of CATIA for reviewing and designing complex shapes effectively. (2 reviews) - Ease of Learning (2 reviews) - Integrations (2 reviews) - Learning Ease (2 reviews) - Tools Variety (2 reviews) - Accuracy (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users face a **complex interface** in CATIA, making it difficult for beginners to navigate effectively. (2 reviews) - Users highlight the **complex UI** of CATIA, noting it can be difficult for beginners to navigate effectively. (2 reviews) - Users find CATIA **expensive** , often questioning its value for casual use due to its complexity and high licensing costs. (2 reviews) - Users find the **high cost of licenses** for CATIA to be a significant barrier for casual usage. (2 reviews) - Users report **file handling issues** with version incompatibility, affecting the management of CAD data in CATIA. (2 reviews) - Users report **integration issues** with CATIA V5, facing challenges with compatibility and system implementation. (2 reviews) - Learning Curve (2 reviews) - Users find CATIA's interface **not user-friendly** , making it difficult for newcomers to navigate and learn effectively. (2 reviews) - Assembly Issues (1 reviews) - Users find CATIA's **complexity** overwhelming, making tasks challenging and causing frustration in design and 2D functionalities. (1 reviews) ## CATIA Reviews ### 1. Catia - how far will you venture down the rabbit hole? **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christopher L. | Advanced Concepts Design Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** It offers a wealth of modeling tools, both in surfacing and in solid modeling. The variety of part tree structures allows for efficient editing of intelligently designed parts. If you design the part correctly, it does very well at propagating changes through the design tree structure based on dependencies. However, it could really use more "opt-in" evaluation of user design in parametric chain based designs. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Useless french error messages. Or even worse, the dreaded "click ok to terminate" dialog box that tells you that Catia has crashed, and offers you no chance to save your files; it only lets you click "ok" and then the program closes. (I should mention my company uses Catia V5). **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Carefully consider how deep you want to fall into this rabbit hole. It holds a wealth of both wonders and misery. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I develop commercial aircraft cabin furniture and hardware. My team consists of an interdisciplinary bunch of engineers, designers, and R&D members that work together, and separately, on various projects pertaining to preproduction, production, design for manufacture, proofs of concepts, prototypes, technology survey and evaluation, software development, product improvement, media, marketing, and more. We design for injection molding, layup, machined parts, compression molded parts and composite materials conforming to OEM commercial aircraft supplier standards for flam, audio, stress, electrical, and biological hazard standards. ### 2. Powerful program **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Harrison W. | Tool Design Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Catia is a very powerful modeling program. It has a myriad of different modules to add to allow all kinds of analysis and modeling to be done. I have used it daily for the last year and a half, and while the initial learning curve was a little steep, if you have past experience with other programs (I have used both Solidworks and AutoCAD) it really becomes a matter of learning what the functions are called. Pad instead of Extrude, Pocket instead of Extrude-Cut etc. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** I have found that Catia is EXTREMELY particular. Unlike Solidworks, it will not make any assumptions about the inputs for any given function. However, this is due to the powerful nature of the program. It can do so many more things than Solidworks, so it requires you to clearly define each input. Another problem I have noticed is that many times if you make a mistake, there is no "cancel" button on many dialogue boxes. If you try to save an assembly along with all the parts, if you've already saved into a particular folder, it will ask you "Do you want to overwrite the existing file" FOR EVERY SINGLE FILE. There is no way to cancel, and no option to "Say yes for all files" so you end up clicking "Yes" a million times. Not fun at all. Also, the drawing workbench is pretty tough to use. I swear it seems like it was an afterthought. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** I would recommend starting with a more user friendly program like Solidworks, to familiarize yourself with modeling in general. Then go ahead and start learning Catia. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** The hardware libraries are fairly useful, but not easy to set up. However, once you get it done, it allows you to have a robust library of hardware components at your fingertips. I'm starting to learn how to set up macros, but I've seen many useful ones set up by coworkers. ### 3. Catia is a helpful tool for designing new test equipment. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alex S. | Test Development Engineer, Defense & Space, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** It is easy to incorporate macro's to assist with processes that are used everyday. I like that there are several diffenet methods for part locating within asssemblies. I like that Links can be broken while still keeping the assembly fuctional, allowing models to be uploaded to sharepoint systems. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** I dislike how difficult it is to replicate movement of assmblies. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** I would recommend using a program or usuer manual when first learning to use CATIA. Alot of tools are self explanatory however there are lots, that are really useful, that are not. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I design test equipment including fixtures and mating methods. Catia allows me to accurately model how test articles are going to be installed within my test fixtures and it allows me to reposition or alter these setups before the article reaches the test facility. ### 4. A powerful CAD program with features for nearly all CAD related operations that can be imagined. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Justin J. | Tooling and Product Design Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Power of the program in dealing with large assemblies. Customization options available. Ease of script writing. Work benches separate out key features into logical groups. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** User interface can be clumsy at first. Switching between work benches can be clumsy without customization. Initial learning curve can be great if user doesn't have experience in another similar CAD software - goes for most all CAD software though. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** A must have in the aerospace industry. Carefully review different options for purchasing, there are many different modules that offer different abilities and features so make sure you get the right ones for your end use. Extra features cost more money, so request a product demonstration and know what you're paying for. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Able to read and design in customer required formats. Able to read large assemblies with ease. Customization and scripts allow time reduction in file creation. ### 5. CATIA V5 Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Victor H. | Mechanical Drafter Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** i like the way catia interface is friendly with the user and all the packages that allow you to modify when you are working on a model or a drawing all the liberties that allow you to modify the way you want **What do you dislike about CATIA?** i do not like how catia does not let you make some instructions if they do not think it can be done that way sometime you need to break the rules to et what you want and most of the times CATIA does not let you do it **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** find someone fully qualified to get support **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** i am in the aerospace industry as a design engineer making the 2D drawings for the mechanical designs some pick ups and some modifications catia allow us to use smarteam as a server to share with all the facilities ### 6. CATIA is a workhorse that can handle very large complex models with ease **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jonathan A. | Director of Design Technology, Architecture & Planning, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 06, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** The model tree interface allows for the creation of complex parametric models. The assembly logic allows for very large models to be opened and viewed at the same time. The automation tools are very powerful. The surface modeling tools are incredible - second to none. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The automation/scripting tools are poorly documented. It is difficult to learn at first and the logic is sometimes finicky. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** CATIA is a very powerful modeling tool but very well suited for beginners. The parametric modeling logic can sometimes be tricky but it is a best in class software for expert users. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** We engineer and construct buildings with complex geometry. In order to do this we create very detailed solid models of all building components and fabricate parts directly from the model. We are currently working in Digital Project but will be switching to CATIA later this year. ### 7. Powerful CAD package with industrial interface **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aaron C. | Graduate Teaching Assistant, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 11, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Catia is very powerful compared to the other CAD systems on the market. Its industrial interface provides the user much more control over the parts they are working on. It is also very easy to create complex assemblies with tight tolerances compared to SolidWorks or Creo. It is easy to modify and edit existing drawings. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Catia sacrifices ease of use to be more powerful. It has the least intuitive interface of the major CAD systems. Creating drawings can be a pain as you have to go through at least three selections to edit tables, and it can sometimes be finicky when putting in dimensions. Catia's default controls are different than most other systems on the market, so if you are using multiple CAD systems it can be confusing when switching back and forth. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I worked at a consulting firm and used all major CAD packages. Catia was mostly used for the design of large aircraft landing gear assemblies. ### 8. I use CATIA V5 at my job to create model and perform structural analyses **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gregory W. | Design Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 29, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I enjoy the integrated ELFINI solver, which is the finite element package. It is extremely easy to take a model created in CATIA and structurally analyze the part. If geometric changes are required, simply change the model and rerun the analysis. Very quick for iterative designs. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The product assembly can be a bit clunky. If you are not careful, the link to the part can be easily broken causing a lot of reassembling. This can cause a lot of headaches if the assemblies are large. Also, I hate the "Click OK to Terminate" window that appear time-to-time. The program will just close without warning and no description of what went wrong. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** CATIA is a very useful CAD software, but is has its issues just like other CAD software packages. The structural analysis is easy and accurate within the linear elastic range. I hear it is very expensive, but I don't have to pay the bill. I am sure other programs have the same capabilities without the cost. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I design and analyze propeller part. ### 9. Catia is one of the best CAD packages available today. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christopher M. | Aerospace Engineer V, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 24, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** CATIA is compartmentalized into multiple work benches that are easy to learn. The software is intuitive to learn, especially if the user base hasn't been tainted by inferior software for 10+ years. Each workbench is used for a different type of work, Part Design is used for solid modeling, Generative Shape Design is used for surfacing work, Assembly Design is used for laying out assemblies. There are other specialized workbenches such as Generative Structural Analysis, Composite Part Engineering, and Kinematics to name a few. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** CATIA has a clumsy linking methodology, linking to published objects in other parts is simple but not intuitive. Replacing a published element is not easily accomplished. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** If a company is switching to CATIA, I would recommend picking up some users with extensive experience working with CATIA. Make sure they have ideas of how to establish modeling conventions and standardization. Look for experience at the three prime Aerospace Companies (Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing). **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used CATIA extensively for the design of flight hardware on aircraft. I have used GSD workbench to model complex parts. The speed at which this can be accomplished is impressive. I have used other CAD packages and found them to be clumsy and difficult to operate efficiently. ### 10. Use CATIA in support of Navy ship building programs **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Israel P. | Solutions Architect, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** We have used CATIA per Navy program requirements. This tool is used to bring design from all other sources including ProE, CREO, SolidWorks, NX and others. It has an excellent ability to bring data from other tools and handle it properly with minimal to no corrections. As a top tier CAD tool, CATIA is excellent for large projects and designs such as ships and other huge machines. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Like other top tier CAD tools it feels heavy and bloated. At this point in time the top CAD tools like ProE/CREO, CATIA, NX, etc all look very similar so it's more of getting the proper infrastructure to support them, like which PDM tool are you using. Dessault's support is simply bad which is something against CATIA. For ease of use I rather recommend SolidWorks or even CREO. PTC's support is the best so far. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Main problem with this product is the poor support from Dessault. If you have an experienced team that can be self supportive, then you should be fine. If you're counting on Dessault support, stay away from it, our experience with them has been nothing short of terrible. We only use CATIA when we need to validate that our data is OK before sending to the program. So basically we keep its use to the absolute minimum or what's necessary. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Main use for it is final assembly of huge machines or extremely large assemblies. Use of its complex tools for specialized design operations. ### 11. Powerful Tool Despite Outdated Interface **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matthew S. | Lead Advanced Concepts Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** When it comes to geometry creation, I have never used a CAD system with such a variety of tools and features. If you can imagine a shape, you can create it using CATIA. It is highly customizable, perfect for designers that like using hot keys and macros to speed up workflow. CATIA is better than most systems at managing large assemblies. There are many features allowing you to boost performance and save time when opening, navigating and saving assemblies. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The interface looks straight out of Windows 98. While newer systems have been upgrated to the graphic standards we are used to in this decade, Catia is seriously lagging behind. The hundreds of tools to use when modeling which can be overwhelming. Finding them in the endless list of menus and low res icons can be frustrating. To say Catia is intuitive would be a great overstatement. To be truely effective using this program takes months of training, even for experienced CAD users. I have been using it for almost 2 years now and still learn new tricks and limitations. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** There are plenty of 3rd party CATIA trainers available. 1 week of training can save you a tramendous amount of time by teaching tools and modeling methods that could likely go undescovered. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Zodiac Aerospace designs and manufactures a wide range of aerospace products. I use Catia to design aircraft seating solutions. By modeling using CATIA we are able to rapidly produce highly stylized parts as well as complex assemblies. CATIA allows us to rapidly iterate our designs resulting in a better product in shorter time periods. ### 12. Catia allows me to take my thoughts and bring them to reality **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Zakary S. | Advanced Concepts Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I like the ability to feel limitless. Catia has so many different ways to do so much. I like the face that I can model huge files with usually no problem once it is loaded. Generative Shape design is extremely powerful. I like the ability to work in multiple planes all at the same time. This is different from any other design software I have ever used. I like the zoom, that is a lot better then a lot of other design softwares I use. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** I currently use V5. Compared to other 3D modeling software's I feel like the user interface is not up to par. The icons don't correlate to what is actually happening. Smarteam is iffy. Other things I don't like is when it does not respond I get a feeling that the files are going to shut down. That is a bit finiky. If you push the system hard it is bound to crash. I guess that is understandable. I hear that version 6 is a lot better then the current version that my company is using. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Speak to your department to confirm if it is the most up to date version. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** We design commercial aerospace interiors. I have realized the ability to go from surfaces to solids and back and forth. We transfer huge files back and forth between business units all over the world. Catia has the ability to transfer data between other rendering softwares that our industrial designers are using. ### 13. Good product (MD2 License) - Intuitive **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael B. | Project Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I like about it what most profesionnal design environments offer - parametric design. It tells you what doesn't make sense. It's easy to jump into a model tree and add new features where you want them. Combined with Smarteam (PLM), it's easy to keep track of changes made and see the evolution of a design. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** It is not always very intelligent when you make changes in the middle of the model tree. It should be able to keep track of the elements that were modified and keep track of the references, but a lot of the time, there will need to be a lot of geometry that has to be relinked in order for downstream features to work. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** If you have the cash to plop down on this system, plan on utilizing many the toolboxes, and have the ability to sell a lot of products, by all means get it. If you just need something simple and/or for personal use, I would not recommend this, as the return on investment would not be great. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** We design aircraft furniture for airlines. There is a lot of traceability required during the design cycle and a lot of collaboration that must take place between several downstream suppliers as well as working along side other companies, and Catia makes it relatively easy to transfer information to others that don't have Catia. Not having to manually keep track of everything by using the vault system that Smarteam uses makes this releatively painless (having a good network is another problem though!) ### 14. Powerful modeling software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Cesar Jabel C. | Production Support Engineer II, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I like best the variety of options to visualize and create the 3D models of your product and how you can see possible problems between your parts. Clash analysis is one of the best tools. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** My main dislike is that is not too user friendly for first time users or even if you use a different modeling software before. Because you have too many tools sometimes is hard to find what you exactly need. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** If your company is manufacturing a different variety of products, like vacuum form plastics, sheet metal or machined parts, have someone specialized on those type of parts to avoid common design errors that cannot be manufactured to improve your design. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** In my job I get a lot of questions from the production floor about parts and Catia is an excellent tool to resolve geometric problems and verify the design intent of a part. ### 15. CATIA V5 Review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** What I like the best about Catia V5 is the variety of licences available, making it a very complete software for Mechanical and Electrical design. If you are developing a whole new product is the right tool to us because is very friendly. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** What I don't liked about it, is the wire and surfacing workbench, is not as friendly as its other workbenches, sometimes making really hard the process of modifying models that were created with that workbench. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** If you are considering this software, contact with the supplier and tell him to explain you all differences between the licences, so you can choose the one you really need and you don't spend more money in a licence that you would not even use all its features. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Mechanical design for an aerospace company. I have realized that with this software we can develop a whole product and make different kind of analysis with it. ### 16. DS Catia Review - Automotive CAD **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nand Kishore G. | Vehicle Safety Engineer (RAM Truck Program), Automotive, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Catia has the ability to build parts in the same way as most CAD packages (NX, Pro-E) such as using extrusions, pockets, revolves, grooves, sweeps, holes, and much more. Catia also has the ability to create parts using generative surface design which is a major plus for complex parts especially for the automotive components **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Lack of "interchangeability" between two different releases in Catia caused a lot of time waste. Not only is it an initial burden, but each time a change was made, the files had to be converted again to be used by different users. Hard to over come this problem for us **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Catia definitely is a great software. It blends well with the most features being easy to use and learn. It has some flaws but DS can work on it and fix them asap for next releases. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** business problems - Packaging issues in Auto components. Catia is quick and helps in solving the Wiring and Cluster packaging quickly ### 17. CATIA works great for massive assemblies, not great for smaller designs. **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tim G. | Lead Mechanical Engineer II, Medical Devices, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** The performance of the 3D environment and the 2D environment are not slowed down by the sheer number of views you have, or the size and complexity of the assembly. So it's great for large boat and airplane design, and perhaps large buildings. If you are coming from AutoCAD to do drawings in CATIA, then you'll probably like it. But if you are coming from Solidworks, it will not be very fun to learn. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Drawing view updates are not easy. And the other drawing tools for 2D drawing creation are just not fun to work with. And the tools for just plain 3D design and manipulation seems to be not very user friendly. The work flow just isn't as fast as it could be. Seems that some basic parametric options for sketching and/or feature patterns was just missing. And if you want to import a STEP file, or ASIC file, you need to have a separate software license for each type of importing. The software should just come with import/export abilities for all the standard neutral formats in the basic version. Especially for the price they charge for each seat. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Test drive it as much as you can. Evaluate for yourself if the cost of the product is worth it for the particular design needs you have. Typically people use CATIA mostly because they are in the Aerospace industry and they have to use CAD data directly from the big Aerospace giants. But if you are not in that industry, I don't know why you would use CATIA unless you are also going to design a massive multi-disipline assembly of some sort. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Dealing with massive data sets. ### 18. I teach CATIA in an institute of higher education. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Akash D. | Assistant Professor (Adjunct), Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** 1. CATIA has a very strong suite of features all integrated into one software. 2. Compared to competition it will not be considered weak in any of the major aspects such as CAD modeling, drawing files, assemblies, animation and rendering or CAE. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** 1. An ant can turn much faster than an elephant: CATIA is a very old software. The advantage of CATIA is that it is an elephant compared to its competition, the disadvantage is that it is an elephant. There is a characteristics that is common to all old software, they are cumbersome. The reason that they are cumbersome is legacy and that it is not easy to change them. They reason for difficulty in changing them is that so much code has been written using old technology that to port it to new technology is a non-trivial preposition. When students complain about the cumbersome aspects of CATIA, I tell them that asking it to change is like asking an elephant to turn, it will take time. Unlike an elephant, a new software will fewer functionalities can change easily because it is easier for an ant to turn. 2. Units are wrong. Youngs modulus is N/mm^2 and not Nmm2. Similar problems exist in other units such as loadings. This trivial looking item is a serious mistake. 3. Rendering is cumbersome compared to Inventor. 4. Animations are a nightmare for my students. The process of going through mechanisms is redundant. It is very difficult to get the "mechanism can be simulated" and it is unnecessary because other software do not require it. Again see Inventor. 5. More meshing options should be given. Quadrilateral or hexahedral elements are a norm. Feel free to contact me if you need a quadrilateral meshing algorithm. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** I will recommend it if you need a one shop solution to your CAD/CAE problems. Make sure you have a lot of help to wade through it. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I teach CATIA for simulated business problems. ### 19. CATIA V5 user since 2002 **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexandre B. | Engineer Specialist, Airlines/Aviation, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 13, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** CATIA V5 is a great modeler which is only limited by your imagination and the licenses you have which gave you access to the different workbenches. The flexibility to achieve parts or assemblies modelisation allows all manufacturing process to be taken into account. The great part about this software is that is does includes reviews capabilities which cut down cost in production of mistakes. V6 (renamed a few weeks ago) uses V5 as the modeler which helps in reducing training coats and provides a stable design platform. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** CATIA V5 is broken down in what is called workbenches. The main ones have been used across many industries and are perfectly developed and bugs are few. The bad part of V5 shows up if you go out of the common bath then existing workbenches often become empty shell needing a lot of time investment between the user and Dassault System. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Pricing the workbenches and functions you need access too is critical. Dassault System also provide test licenses which are good to know and discover function and capabilities before buying those. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** CATIA V5 on PC allows the usage of amazingly powerfull machine and as a result is able to display very large amount of 3D data keeping the best resolution. ### 20. High tech software for more advanced CAD users. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anthony B. | Senior Engineer, Automotive, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** It's surfacing ablility and it attention to detail on the models. Models can be simple but does allow for more complex modeling. I do like the fact that is it used worldwide which means there is a large community of users out there that use Catia, whichever version it may be, that I could easily search for online like through google and likely find the answer to my question. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Can be overcomplicated at times creating more work for what shuld be simpler tasks. Lack of customer support without paying for it. Constant updates means we are usually on an obsolete version. The graphics can seem primitive and the wording and menu selection often does not make any sense. The menu selection can be long, where you have to select too many sub menu selections to perform a task. It is also difficult to remember where to find certain menu selections. The lack of online support and documention on how to perform simple task from Catia, **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Be sure that you are guarenteed good support for this product from Dassault, by benig able to make a simple phone call with answers to all your questions. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating reliable CAD models that can be read industry wide through translators and the fact that many programs can read in CATIA models. ### 21. Great for generating complex geometry, managing large assemblies. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eugene D. | Mechanical Engineer, Semiconductors, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** As an occasional user who has experience with many CAD platforms, there are many things I can appreciate about Catia. For one, the software can generate and handle complex geometries, like those seen in the aerospace industry, with little difficulty. Unlike Solidworks, Catia doesn't tax system resources heavily. I am able to manipulate large assemblies with ease and without lag. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Some things are hard to get used to, like the manner with which you manipulate the models within graphics window (it takes two mouse buttons at once). The software isn't nearly as user friendly or intuitive as SolidWorks. However, once you get used to all that, the functionality really makes Catia stand out. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Do as much training as possible before diving in. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** When I was using Catia, we needed to be able to manipulate complex, aerospace geometries in order to design engineering fabrics that would cover those surfaces correctly. At times, when manipulating a particularly detailed part, or large assembly, I was blow away by how reliably Catia functioned. Being an experienced SolidWorks user, I can all but guarantee that my system would have froze or worse if I attempted to work on those models in SW. ### 22. Engineer **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mandeep S. | Engineer, Oil & Energy, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 29, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Modeling ease and assembly. Many complex shapes can be easily generated . flexible user interface along with integrity to PLM **What do you dislike about CATIA?** FEA needs a lot to upgrade into its capabilities **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** I have recommended it to my friend learning it after graduation and he ended up in a job required CATIA skills. It is very user friendly and vastly used in Big industries where quality systems are mature and considered as really important aspect for the business. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used to use it in the past. Currently I am in FEA and sometime we get geometries done in CATIA and import ### 23. Custom ambulance engineer **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brian R. | Engineer/Marketing, Mechanical or Industrial Engineering, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I liked the way you can build the Catia system to what you need. You can add almost any package you need to get your job done which allows Catia to be used in almost any industry. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Catia is SUPER expensive compared to Solidworks or Inventor. I wasn't able to easily control my assemblies parametrically. One board would resize and leave another part that had colinear constrained lines alone. We ended up switching to Solidworks. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Look at cheaper alternatives before purchasing. If you are forced to use it then it's Ok but definitely not preferred. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I was taking sales drawings and building 3d cabinet assemblies and converting the data to prepare the CNC to cut the boards. Eliminating hand drawings to build cabinets and creating CAD prints with exploded views was a huge advancement for the company. ### 24. Been working with CATIA V5 for over a year as drafter and mechanical design engineer. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Antonio P. | Design Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** The many options available from all the workbenches makes CATIA a very complete PLM software. Also the Part and assembly design workbenches are really easy to use and effective. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** In my experience, the need to be changing different licences to use specific tools, and SmarTeam issues with CATIA. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Very recommended for use in aerospace and automotive industry. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Been working in mechanical design, and all designs are made thinking first in manufacturability and ease of production. The advantages come when designing the parts and analyzing these points and the ease for assembling in the production line. ### 25. Basic User for Aerospace Engineering **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christy B. | Flight Test Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I've only used CATIA for basic modeling and model review, but it has been fairly intuitive to pick up as I'm working. It's definitely preferable to other modeling software I've worked with in the past. The different workbenches make it easy to understand what type of model you're working with. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** After learning the basics of the program, it seems a little less intuitive to learn more advanced operations. I'm sure that just takes time and research though. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** After working with Solidworks, CATIA was not a huge jump - but I definitely find it to be a better product. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I currently use CATIA for model review as a stress engineer. I use it to ensure parts are meeting the requirements set forth by our stress engineering practices. ### 26. I used Catia to design advance concept of premium seating solutions. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Victor C. | Advance Concept Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** It is a powerful tool very stable and engineering orientated. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** A lot of very powerful features in Catia are hidden into a lot of different licenses. It is very often that a specific feature is missing. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Before starting using Catia it is important to review what license are important to your specific needs. The license choice is extremely important. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** We find new innovative way to design seat for the premium aircraft passengers. I use Catia to generate ideas, design, and engineer the seats. ### 27. CATIA V5 Review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 07, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I find that CATIA has a ton of workbenches that make it really easy to create parts and wireframe geometry. I also work in the aerospace industry and the Aerospace Sheet Metal workbench is quite useful. I have found CATIA to be just as robust as NX or a similar caliber CAD software. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Working in the design tree can be difficult because it requires you to define the current "in work object", highlight the correct object, or select the correct object to create solids and geometry. From what I've been told, CATIA wasn't designed first and foremost with the drawing capabilities in mind. Therefore, the part and assembly functions are more useful. It is also a French product and occasionally you get warning messages in less-than-ideal English explanations. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Keep in mind the full capabilities of this software. Some smaller firms may not need so much functionality. If you would use the many workbenches available to you, I would say it's worth it. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I work in the aerospace industry and use it to create flight parts, especially sheet metal parts. ### 28. Highly capable and powerful **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** It contains just about any tool to design or analyze a part that you could imagine (granted, you may need to pay extra for some). We deal a lot with lofts in the aerospace industry and there are quite a lot of tools to help build complex lofts. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The tools are not quite as efficient to use as some other programs, might take a few more clicks or inputs to get done what you want. The program is also quite fragile in that if you press the wrong combinations of buttons the program may crash. You can start to understand some of the issues that cause the program to crash and avoid them most of the time though. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** CATIA is probably best used by large companies that need a large variety of tools at their disposal. It can do just about anything you ask of it, even if it does crash from time to time. Cost may also be prohibitively high for many small companies. CATIA is also focused mainly on modeling, with some weaker drawing tools. There are probably better programs for drawing creation. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** The main benefits I have realized are from the lofting and FEM tools which are quite capable. ### 29. CATIA V5 Review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I like the program's wide range of capability. There is hardly any type of part that could be made in this software using one capability or another. There is always more to be learned. Additional benches like sheet metal, tubing and composites make it easy to create parts in those given categories. Software is applicable across many purposes and industries. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Frequent crashes. All too often do I receive the dreaded "Click OK to Terminate" box. I also dislike the help feature. It takes you to an internet site that has a poorly designed user interface. It is very difficult to find the help category that you are looking for. And often the help guidelines don't go into enough detail to be beneficial. Sometimes software needs to give better guidance as to why a particular operation will not work as desired. Often the Union Trim feature does not operate as I am trying to use it. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Take a class as opposed to trying to learn it on your own. Also, be sure to coordinate with others in your work group as to proper modeling method. If everyone utilizes different techniques and you're all working on the same system, then it is going to cause problems down the road. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am designing parts for the dynamics system for a rotorcraft. This includes gears, bearings, shafts, housings, and a oil lubrication system. Using relational design capability has been heavily utilized. ### 30. Worst CAD software product available **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** It is the only CAD software that leverages dual SLI linked graphics cards. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** This software was far behind its competition when it came out 17years ago, and has not had a significant upgrade since - v6's only "upgrade" is the embedding of Enovia into its core. Think about what technologies have evolved and have been created in the past 17 years, and think about what was state of the art then (windows ME, lotus 123, brick sized mobile phones, single user arcade style video games, to name only a few). Dassault doesn't even do regression testing on any release. Not only is this product inferior among its peers, it is more expensive to buy , install, and maintain. Don't accept Dassault's BS sales pitch where they talk about the future and not what they have today. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Stay away from this product. Use Pro/E, NX, SolidWorks, or even Autocad and you won't be sorry. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Aerospace is my industry and optimizing engineering work flow is my passion ### 31. CATIA Grade for the Average User **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Airlines/Aviation | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** What I enjoy most is the simplicity of designing and sketching once you have familiarity with the program. Also, some of the features such as clashing and cross section views are helpful and very easy to use. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** What I dislike about CATIA is the difficulty that a begineer has finding Icons, or functions in the program to complete tasks. For me, finding these to get started where a little difficult since they weren't very self explanatory. Another thing I disliked was the ambigious errors that would come up, they aren't very helpful to solve the problem and use the program correctly. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Familiarize yourself with the basics, read instruction manuals. Once you have a knowledge of the functions, designing willbe much easier as well as manipulatiing models the way you would like. Minimizes frustration level. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Basic tool design, making tools quickly and easily based on the needs of production. Realized that CATIA allows this to be done quickly and easily when you know how to use it correctly. ### 32. CATIA provides advanced design and analysis capabilities, and integrated FEM **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** The composite design utilities allow for ply stack up and orientation, allowing for structural analysis inside of CATIA, and usable for downstream FEM analysis inside of Abaqus CAE. Another area where CATIA is very strong is with its Top Down Relational Design capabilities. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The floating license sharing paradigm can use some improvement. You can either set inside of CATIA to end a session after a specified period of inactivity, in which your session will exit, or it will not release an inactive license until you manually close the application. This is problematic due to the length of time required to check out models, and launch a CATIA session. ~As compared With PTC's Pro/Engineer, where the active floating licence is released after a short period of inactivity, and then becomes available to other CAD users, and and idle session is resumed simply by the user moving their mouse cursor. The later behavior being superior because you don't require as many licenses, and utilization per license is maximized. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Take a class or two on CATIA Relational Design and enjoy! **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm primarily working on the design and analysis of composite structures at the moment. ### 33. Easy to learn and adopt to your needs **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Srinivasa Reddy P. | Mechanical Design Engineer (On contract), Aviation & Aerospace, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I was a Wildfire advance user. Catia is a such tool to learn very quickly and do some experiments. Where are Pro/E Wildfire has to follow certain way to do quick things. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Assembly and constrains are totally different with Pro/E Wildfire. I did not like much. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Yes **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** We do day to day designs and changes and now convert legacy data to Catia. And also we use for quick tolerance check 2d or 3d ### 34. A great tool for complex surface modeling. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brian R. | Mechanical Designer, Oil & Energy, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 15, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** CATIA V4 is a great design tool for creating complex surface models for industries such as automotive or aerospace. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The solid modeling side in V4 isn't quite as powerful as some other software packages. Also, the 3D to 2D transfer isn't very clean. The drawing elements are very difficult to work with. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** The language can be a bit difficult (probably because it created be a French company), but once figured out, CATIA is a great tool. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Working in the automotive industry is a great opportunity to put CATIA to good use. It's the best software for obtaining the smooth transitions you need in complex surface styling. ### 35. CATIA, a great tool to learn a new product **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** CATIA worked well for me as a tool to pull apart a completed design. The tree clearly showed the different structures and assemblies that made up our product. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The user interface for CATIA was not that easy to determine. Once you work through the program it is easy enough but at first its a bit of a struggle to figure it out. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** My business problems usually deal with having to rearrange the structure of a product. The best part was being able to pull a parts list and create the new structures that determine what would be built in production. I could send the new assemblies to engineers to update the model. I could also use the most up to date models from our engineers to accurately update the models we had in production. ### 36. CATIA FOR MECHANICAL / PLASTIC PRODUCT DESIGN **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Design | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** The richness in design modules and tools for design products with ease and feasibility. My last CATIA usage was V5R10 but even then design complex surfacing for electronic and consumer product was fantastic. I have seen on seek peek of V62XXX and look like design is made much easier. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The only drawback I had with CATIA V5RXX was the UI and menu layout. I wish it would have been more integrated like the Siemens PLM NX. Takes a while to organize and get used to the tool icons and locations. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** If you can combine integration and navigation of Solidworks into CATIA, it will be a head of competitors. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Primary used of CATIA is to cut down product design and iterations of protypes (cost) thru virtual design and simulations. ### 37. Catia as a design tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jessica S. | Design Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** The variety of resources to design, there is an infinite of posibilities, you can customize your screen and get familiarized with the tools easily. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The errors that come up suddenly like click to terminate **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Trainings and always keep explorieng, there is an infinite tools that caia offers **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Designing for aerospce ### 38. CATIA V5 **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matthew C. | Stress Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 27, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** CATIA V5 isn't the easiest CAD software to learn, but it is very capable. I really like the ability to take section cuts and modify those section cuts with relative ease. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** I dislike that this program isn't very intuitive. If you don't have someone helping you get started, it might be pretty hard to get good at it. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm using CATIA V5 to analyze aerospace structures. It has helped me to put together my analysis packages as well as the analyses themselves. ### 39. New product manufacturing engineer. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** As a new product manufacturing engineer of aerospace products, I am an everyday user of CAD software. I think that CATIA is a straight forward CAD software and it has all the tools required for an ME to perform diverse analysis and improve the manufacturing quality of products. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** I think that catia's interface could get improved. Also, I have had a couple of issues with the software crashing, but in general i would give it a good rating. The software's tools have given me a good sight on how to improve my product's quality by setting up the required tooling to achieve the desired forms. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am providing my engineering team with lean manufacturing feedback to improve design's quality and reduce waste. ### 40. Great for Mechanical Design **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gonzalo C. | Exhibit Designer, Marketing and Advertising, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 07, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Real life like working environment with new effect, materials. Reducing the complexity of the product development by allowing integration of various approaches for developing the product within a single platform. It introduces unique approach for systems engineering **What do you dislike about CATIA?** There is a steep learning curve that comes with the product. The learning can stop a majority of users from using the product. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** No! and Yes. Great for precise mechanical design not product development. Didnt like it for product development. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Tolerances. Mechanical designs in transportation devices that have four wheels (cant say exact item) ### 41. CATIA Review from Manufacturing Engineer **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Semiconductors | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Ability to produce flat 1:1 drawings from 3D solid models to use for inspection templates. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** I wish it was easier to send files over email. When trying to send an assembly over email, multiple files are needed and they can be pretty large, so sending complex assemblies becomes difficult. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I review and analyze models for manufacturability before release of engineering. Clarify questions from suppliers about engineering drawings by referring to the solid models. Generate inspection tools from solid models. Verify part conformance in manufacturing. Develop work instructions from assembly models for production. Catia makes it easy to accomplish all the above daily functions associated with the different facets (above) of my responsibilities. ### 42. CATIA Review **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mani A. | Mechanical Engineering Lead, Business Supplies and Equipment, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** the totality of product development. To explain, you can use CATIA not only to develop a product design, but can also include the machining processes, production shop and also simulate the ergonomic requirements of the product. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** A bit tougher to learn compared to Pro-Mechanica / ANSYS. It's a personal opinion though. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Put in the time and effort to learn it. you won't feel bad about it later on in your career. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** tool dynamics, ergonomics, structural analysis ### 43. Excellent product to develop aerospace systems **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Catia has many tools that can be use to create anything you need without making a big process to get the desired result. Using correct tools can lead you to decrease time spent in designing complex features. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** when there are small issues with tools or using of tools there are not much information online to solve it quickly, all issues are solved by tricks learned by people with more experience. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I work in aerospace industry, interiors division. Sometimes there are organic shapes made by industrial designers, and when mechanical team work with those complex shapes CATIA is very useful with all those really helpful workbenches it has. ### 44. Catia V6 **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Goods | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 06, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** The capability of Catia far exceeds the capability of any other CAD software that I've used. Being able to use parameters enables not only the easier scaling of parts, but also virtual part analysis that is otherwise not possible. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Catia can be less than user friendly sometimes, and it has a large learning curve before the user is competent. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** give yourself at least 6 months of dedicated training to learn the software **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** consumer packaging design ### 45. I use CATIA V5 R21 daily at work **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** The best thing about CATIA is the surface design bench as it opens a lot opportunities to create complicated design. The sheet metal work bench is very useful in creating the SM parts which ensures the producibility of the part. The tree structure when creating a part is very useful,easy to edit and understand the geometry of the part. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** A lot of times managing large assemblies in CATIA can be tedious. CATIA can generate a lot of errors in large assemblies. I experience a lot of ghost links and floating parts in the assemblies. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Developing business class seat shells for commercial airlines. ### 46. Catia V5 review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sobhan R. | Material & Process Engineer II, Airlines/Aviation, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Powerful: able to sketch, model, analyize, and program (CNC) on same platform. Does not hog system resouces. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** User interface clunky, icons reset location, can be slow. Can take a while to get aclimated to interface after moving from other software. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Once you get a hang of the interface, its very simliar to other 3d modeling. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Aerospace. Specifically, design for test samples, concepts, etc. ### 47. Design engineer **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I like the capabilities that Catia has and his friendly interface **What do you dislike about CATIA?** I don't like that it it too expensive and each the cost of each licence **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** I used a tutorial called "I get it" which was helpful in learning the basics of catis **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I work of a business seats company and catia is great, specially for the design team that I work on. ### 48. There is a learning curve but once that is reached, it **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Once, I figured out where all the icons and tools are, navigating is not too bad. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The interface isn't always the easiest. It can be hard to find where the different icons are hidden. I do not like how difficult it is to find things in the customize tools window. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Mostly using Catia to look at models and unfold parts. Not too much design but I have done a little. Using Catia is much easier than looking at multiple drawings to find a part far down in the product tree. ### 49. Great to have on you resume, but not necessarily to use. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Judah R. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Extremely detailed, allowing users to find the exact part in an assembly hierarchy. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Difficult learning curve, especially if you're using it with a specialized pointer device or on Unix. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Consider SolidWorks first if you can. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Solving: Difficulty finding small individual parts in large assemblies. Benefits: Parts are now locatable. ### 50. Mechanical Design Engineer II **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Carlos A. | Design Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 20, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Analysis tools, different workbenches for different needs, ease of manipulation of the 3D models, shortcuts configuration **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Not very user friendly and a steep learning curve **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Be prepared to invest many hours learning this software **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Manufacturability, order of assembly for detail parts, draft analysis for injection mold parts, clash analysis ## CATIA Discussions - [If CATIA provide solution for fluid dynamics problem it will be good](https://www.g2.com/discussions/31774-if-catia-provide-solution-for-fluid-dynamics-problem-it-will-be-good) - 1 comment, 2 upvotes - [What is CATIA used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-catia-used-for) - 1 comment - [What is inside Catia software?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-inside-catia-software) - 1 comment - [What is Catia software used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-catia-software-used-for) - 1 comment - [View CATIA pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/catia/reviews?page=5§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-05+09%3A28%3A09+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=37817642-64a8-434f-9bbc-daebfe178363&secure%5Btoken%5D=a81f44199ed3b9315c923ec3bd1d353ed8fdcfa65652e637dd96fed878efba8f&format=llm_user) ## CATIA Integrations - [Microsoft Excel](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-excel/reviews) - [NX CAM](https://www.g2.com/products/nx-cam/reviews) - [PyCharm](https://www.g2.com/products/pycharm/reviews) - [Teamcenter](https://www.g2.com/products/teamcenter/reviews) ## CATIA Features **Design** - 3D/solid modeling Tools - Drawing Tools - Editing Tools - Rendering tools **Tools - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - 3D/solid modeling Tools - Rendering Tools - Drawing Tools - Editing Tools - Text Editing Tools **Tools** - Fluid analysis - Finite element analysis - Multibody dynamics **File Options - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - Export Files - Import Files - File Interoperability - Backwards compatibility - File size **Work** - Discrete event modeling - Continuous event modeling - Mechanical event simulation - Manufacturing process simulation - Integrate **Customization - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - Custom Commands - Custom Scripts - Custom Menus - Custom Interface **Environment** - Hardware support - Task - Manage Multiple Profiles - Command Clarity **Environment - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - Hardware support - Task-based interfaces - Manage Multiple Profiles - Command Clarity ## Top CATIA Alternatives - [Onshape](https://www.g2.com/products/onshape/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (712 reviews) - [Designcenter Solid Edge](https://www.g2.com/products/designcenter-solid-edge/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (610 reviews) - [Autodesk Fusion](https://www.g2.com/products/autodesk-fusion/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (510 reviews)