--- 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: '2026-07-13' 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 value the **ease of use and powerful design capabilities** of CATIA, particularly for complex automotive applications. (3 reviews) - Users praise CATIA for its **robust 3D modeling and advanced surface design capabilities** , making it ideal for complex projects. (2 reviews) - Users appreciate the **flexibility and power** of CATIA, especially for complex design and automotive ergonomics analysis. (2 reviews) - Users appreciate the **design flexibility** of CATIA, enabling powerful and complex design capabilities in various industries. (2 reviews) - Users find CATIA to be very **easy to use** and straightforward, enhancing their modeling experience efficiently. (2 reviews) - Integrations (2 reviews) - Tools Variety (2 reviews) - Accuracy (1 reviews) - Advanced Capabilities (1 reviews) - CAD Integration (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users struggle with the **complex interface** of CATIA, finding it difficult to navigate and understand, especially for beginners. (2 reviews) - Users find the **complex UI** challenging and difficult to navigate, particularly for beginners and newcomers to CATIA. (2 reviews) - Users find CATIA to be **expensive** , with high licensing costs that burden casual users and affect accessibility. (2 reviews) - Users find the **expensive licensing** of CATIA to be a significant barrier, especially for casual users. (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) - Complex Setup (1 reviews) ## CATIA Reviews ### 1. Best Designing Tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 15, 2019 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Catia is best designing tool where you can do part modelling, Assembly, Sheet metal designing which has good UI and options can be used easily for designing models. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** CATIA license is bit costly and dimensions cannot be constrained automatically which is difficult for new biginners. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** CATIA is best designing tool with good UI where you can design complex models easily. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** CATIA helps me in designing 2D models out from 3D for Train underframe, Bodyshell and also helps in designing interiors for Trains. ### 2. Good CAD software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2019 **What do you like best about CATIA?** It is very easy to design surface for automotive parts **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Standart parts library is very poor. It make us slow when desinging **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Casting parts and their molds can be easily designed. ### 3. The best CAD software out there **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Design | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 23, 2019 **What do you like best about CATIA?** It is so easy to control and create geometries in this software. The shortcuts are just perfect and navigation is super simple **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Manipulation of assemblies is a bit difficult since the options provided are not at par with those provided by their competitors **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** If you are working on sheet metal, catia is the go to tool. Great for modelling. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use it to generate models of new design which are later exported for analysis ### 4. Experience using catia as a designer **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 02, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** - endless possibilities in terms of modules, libraries of materials, options.. - great surface modelling capabilities - relatively fast - very powerful, can open giant assemblies **What do you dislike about CATIA?** - extremely complicated to learn how to use - VERY expensive - mouse function is not easy to get the hang of - not good compatibility between older CATIA versions and current ones **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Get good training, make sure it is really the tool you need. If you are able to get a cheaper/less complex tool, I would suggest going for that first. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using this software to design relatively small assemblies. In this context, even though the software is very powerful and offers many possibilities, it would be more convenient to use a less powerful and complex software since the power required for these assemblies is not that much. However, if designing large assemblies or very complex ones, especially in the aerospace industry, CATIA is the way to go. ### 5. Experience of a Design Engineer with CATIA V5 **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Airlines/Aviation | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** CATIA is an ideal software for a design engineer like me, since it allows endless possibilities to design. - It has different modules depending on what type of design you are doing: sheet metal, wiring, assemblies, composite materials... - The interface is completely customizable, so you can display only the icons you need to use to have a cleaner screen, or you can have all the icons displayed. Also, you can display the icons wherever in the screen you want. - The graphics are really good, and the software offers many possibilities to view a design: 2D, 3D, birds eye view... - Controls pan zoom rotate are easy **What do you dislike about CATIA?** What I dislike most about CATIA is that sometimes it is not easy to use if you have not been trained before or don´t have some experience. It does not come with tutorials or an easy help button, so it really is a software targeted for people who know how to design already. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Worth considering acquiring CATIA for the endless possibilities it offers, the good quality of graphics, and the ease of use if the designer has had previous training or experience. For new users, it is essential to have training in order to use it well. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am designing all sorts of components for aircraft interiors. Benefits are primarily related to all the possibilities that the software offers. There really is nothing you can´t design. Also, CATIA offers excellent graphics so it is really easy to take good quality screenshots for presentations etc. ### 6. User friendly and simple but not powerful **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** vignesh k. | Grad Student, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2019 **What do you like best about CATIA?** UI is highly user-friendly and easy for new users to adapt. Designing is easy and quick and the software is easy to fire up compared to others. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The software is not highly powerful and it doesn't have an analysis which is available in other comparable software. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** If you are new to designing and need software for school projects or simple designing for a company. this can be used **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Designing composite air foils. ### 7. Very Easy to use software and Best in the industry **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sailender N. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 31, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I really liked the features and a lot of commands makes the design very descriptive. The software also helps in high end engineering, analysis and motion simulation. I had used the product in designing my projects which required high end analysis and simulation. Its perfect for surface design industries, perfect for mould designing and stuff. I find that CATIAs Part Design workbench is superior over other similar modeling solid modeling softwares because of its utilization of parametric modeling. Being able to work inside of a history tree really makes CATIA a step above the rest. In addition, CATIAs Imagine and Shape workbench is the most manageable and intuitive freeform modeling softwares I have ever used. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** I feel that the interface in general is a bit outdated, but that comes down to just graphics. The only other think I dislike is Generative Shaoe Design. While I like the idea of parametric modeling for CATIAs other workbenches, softwares like Alias are set up much better for surface modeling. - Figuritively, there are 50 types of license levels, working environments and so on. Yow will often find yourself switching between environments and licenses, just to perform very simple tasks. My company uses a very expensive license type just to enable us import and export STEP data and use some tools that we seldom use. - When you switch between licenses, you have to restart CATIA. Very annoying and time consuming. - When you connect a projector, it messes up your whole interface and all your buttons get lost or hide somewhere. - No backwards compatibility. - Modeling is not very intuitive. It took me 5 minutes to figure out that an unclickable selection box that asks for an axis input was actually meant to be right-clicked. ONLY RIGHT-CLICK?! Nothing happens when you left click, which is insane. - Investment costs are very high. Dassault brought cloud system with CATIA 6 but I did not have a chance to experience it. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** CATIA 5 is a platform of many tools and there are many licenses for it. You will not be able to do everything with just one license, so decide carefully when you buy a license. Inadequate licenses are a big problem when you need to do something which your license doe not include. CATIA 6 seems to be going towards a better direction, especially for designers. There are lots of CATIA versions and releases, do a good research which one to buy. Portability is another issue: you will need VPN services to work remotely on your laptop and always connect to Internet. Catia is one of the most powerful CAD modeling software's on the market. Although it is expensive, it is validated in its cost. It is an extremely useful software used by the biggest names in the industry. Time is money, when I need to design fast, and to surface something with lightning speed Catia is a weapon of choice, fast, agile, safe and sound, small size files, flexibility.... The list goes on and on for this one :) KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it to finalize my data that I created in a surface modeling software, in order to submit to engineers. I also do several minor modifications and finishing touches; for example closing surfaces, joining edges, trimming or capping holes. My goal in using CATIA is to build solid models for both rendering through visualization softwares and presenting in a digital format, and for the purpose of rapid prototyping. The biggest benefit I have realized is that CATIA makes it far easier to stitch models for 3D printing than any other software I have used. ### 8. CATIA, an alternate to 3D drawing and assembly **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mahmood B. | Manufacturing Engineer III, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 12, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** CATIA has a distinct UI compared to other 3D software. But once you get used to it, CATIA is the better software for drawing 3D. It also has a better UI in sense of assembly drawing and drawing sheet. The other good thing is, you can have back compatible files in CATIA **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Compared to other 3D software, the 3D sketch option seems a little off the grid. Because many of the software came up with dynamic 3D drawing. Compared to that catia does have some works to do. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Mostly surface rendering as well as assembly drawings I did in CATIA. The benefit is, across multiple platforms you can have one single file to play with. ### 9. CATIA-THE MOST USER FRIENDLY DESIGN TOOL **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Arun D. | Automotive Design Engineer, Mechanical or Industrial Engineering, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 01, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** CATIA has the ability to create complex designs with highest efficiency. It is also very simple to use and has a wide variety of tools to silplify designing the part and assemble as a product. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** It takes a bit of time for 2d sectioning for drawing tool and also for opening complex product files. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** My only request is to reduce the time taken for opening and processesing speed taken while working on complex designs. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am currently using CATIA for design of plastic parts of automobile like facia,dash board,door panel and instrument panel. Further the completed designs are taken 3D drawing tool and then analysed for control points and isostatism. ### 10. Design Engineer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 24, 2019 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Surfaces feaatures are better than similar softwares. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** It can take a while to learn all command in workbenches. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Get a manual **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Design for manufacturing solutions ### 11. Catia V5 Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2019 **What do you like best about CATIA?** The organization of the model to allow for quick modifications to geometry **What do you dislike about CATIA?** License issues and cost, it is very expensive for additional licenses. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ability to communicate with fellow engineers in a 3D world and allow for tooling design during product concept ### 12. Gold Standard of CAT products **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Curt C. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 30, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** CATIA's ability to provide visualization of products with ease. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The software can occasionally have difficulty working with other programs such as TeamCenter. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Other users are the best source of support. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** CATIA provides the ability to design and modify structural products, with full analytical power prior to creating real world mockups. ### 13. Advanced CAD program for experienced designers **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 24, 2019 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Feature packed. Can do just about anything with CATIA **What do you dislike about CATIA?** User interface is a little dated and difficult to navigate **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating efficient designs and automotive package solutions ### 14. Powerful, but not user friendly **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 27, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I know that Catia provides enormous opportunities, and its a powerful CAD tool in the right hands **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Catia is really not user friendly at all. It is neither easy nor fun to learn. Also it looks ancient when you open it(Not that that matters so much). **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Design, large scale and small. It’s great to create 3D representations of my ideas ### 15. CATIA ( DESIGN COME TRUE) **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 30, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Best software in market with good design tool. It have the best surfacing tools in the market moreover being a fast software it is used by many big industries **What do you dislike about CATIA?** User interface is not that good . Like mouse gestures are not available , zoom in zoom out is difficult, rotating a body uses to mouse buttons . **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are make designs of our products ### 16. CATIA V6 Designing Software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shishir K. | Graduate Research Assistant, Higher Education, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 24, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** It is the most detail-oriented software available. It works smoothly allowing me to work uninterruptedly. It supports heavy files (>500MB) without any hiccups. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Not very easy to customize the menu options and it takes time to get used to them. Sometimes the start takes a little longer than usual. It is one of the most expensive software where other software are available at much cheaper prices but it depends on the type of work it is used for. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** CATIA is the best software available in the market for heavy designing. It helps you to work on huge assemblies and be creative with it. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used CATIA modeling and designing of sheet metal components. I had to assign different materials to various components and it was very easy to change and assign materials. ### 17. High precision design software, perfect for automotive industry. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Piyush G. | Intern, Automotive, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 27, 2017 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I really liked the features and a lot of commands makes the design very descriptive. The software also helps in high end engineering, analysis and motion simulation. I had used the product in designing my projects which required high end analysis and simulation. Its perfect for surface design industries, perfect for mould designing and stuff. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** With it's utilities comes the cost. The license of this software is very costly which small/medium scale industries cannot afford. The motion analysis and simulation tool are not sufficient as other softwares in the market gives better result. the software can me majorly used for modelling. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** I highly recommend this software for new learners. There are many jobs associated with this software in the market. Can learn and then Earn from this software. Lots of tutorials on internet. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used this software for educational purpose while I was pursuing my Diploma in this software. ### 18. CATIA provides unrivaled surfacing capabilities but lacks the user friendly element of its competito **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 14, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** CATIA allows you to turn your visions and drawings into 3D dimensional parameterized parts **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Many simple functions and shortcuts are missing, many clicks are required to accomplish easy models. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have modeled aircraft parts and assemblies for a variety of different projects. ### 19. In-depth product management **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 14, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I like the versioning feature for multiple iterations of the same part. The "Explore" feature for products is also very helpful. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The tools in extra workbenches are not always intuitive or well-defined. In general, troubleshooting or how-to info is hard to find in the public sphere. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use CATIA for detail and product design. The kinematic modeling feature is beneficial for checking interferences. ### 20. Honest CATIA review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 07, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I like that CATIA gives the ablilty to do complex surface and 3D design **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The V6 version UI is not intuitive and there is too many different licences/apps that you need to purchase to use for proper package. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Cross-linking with mating parts and assemblies for auto updating and revision control are the benefits that I have realized with CATIA ### 21. Powerful but occasionally frustrating **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 31, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Powerful piece of CAD software with plenty of capability **What do you dislike about CATIA?** UI is dated, some functions are frustrating **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Full engineering design, from concept to validation ### 22. Catia is precision on design thar you need to manufature perfection **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Geraldo S. | Program Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 03, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** The possobility od designing micro components to macro and assembling all together and viewing a real life product to its minimun details before is manufatured **What do you dislike about CATIA?** nothing is missing in this software as far as my using needs **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Manufacturability and design esthetics ### 23. Catia v5 user **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Catia v5 is very good software for every design engineer with lot of modules **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Nothing for this software but while using sheet metal some problems occurred **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Designing of components is easy ### 24. Great Designing Software **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vinay P. | Mechanical Design Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 24, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** It's a combined tool to make your work get done, with lot of functions and **What do you dislike about CATIA?** It has some resolution problem when working on 4k displays **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Design 3D parts for the textile industries along with the sheet metal design for other projects ### 25. CATIA use for automotive **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 29, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Ability to deal with big models and use Boolean operations **What do you dislike about CATIA?** UI is somewhat counterintuitive and clunky **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Hire a company to guide employees through use **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Modeling for large assemblies is the problem solved and the biggest benefit, as well as very powerful Boolean operations ### 26. Great 3D Solid Modelng **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Very robust in terms of 2D Drafting and 3D solid modeling. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Can sometimes be very complicated when modeling 3D surfaces **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** For anyone who wishes to use the most advanced 2D/3D modeling software for their business products. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Engineeing Design ### 27. CATIA detailed design software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** It is a very detailed software and great once you get the hang of it **What do you dislike about CATIA?** you can't make corrections to your design easily **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Design with detail every step of the way **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** designing complex systems ### 28. Great product! Recommended! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 20, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Great product! Easy to use even with no prior experience. Intuitive. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** It may become difficult to use due to the many tools available. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** N/A **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Design of aircraft engine. ### 29. Powerful tool for aerospace industry **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Israel L. | Process Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 09, 2017 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Available modules and functions to choose from. Capability to create macros **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The licenses are very expensive. Hard to keep up to date versions. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Consider that might be less expensive software than achieves your expected reaulta **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Wiring design ### 30. Best design software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Very easy and intuitive, I like the add features and how you can purchase extra licenses **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Sometimes it crashes for no reason but this is rare **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Aircraft design ### 31. CATIA V6 Review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christopher T. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 13, 2017 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I find that CATIAs Part Design workbench is superior over other similar modeling solid modeling softwares because of its utilization of parametric modeling. Being able to work inside of a history tree really makes CATIA a step above the rest. In addition, CATIAs Imagine and Shape workbench is the most manageable and intuitive freeform modeling softwares I have ever used. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** I feel that the interface in general is a bit outdated, but that comes down to just graphics. The only other think I dislike is Generative Shaoe Design. While I like the idea of parametric modeling for CATIAs other workbenches, softwares like Alias are set up much better for surface modeling. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** I would recommend acquiring and learning V6 as soon as possible, because many industries that utilize CATIA will be switching from V5 to V6 soon. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** My goal in using CATIA is to build solid models for both rendering through visualization softwares and presenting in a digital format, and for the purpose of rapid prototyping. The biggest benefit I have realized is that CATIA makes it far easier to stitch models for 3D printing than any other software I have used. ### 32. Great software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Isaac D. | Senior Structural Designer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 07, 2017 **What do you like best about CATIA?** The graphics are beyond other 3D software. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** It is very expensive and takes longer to learn, but the functionality is great. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Designing ships and parts. ### 33. best design software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Srikanth Reddy B. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2017 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Surface modeling is very easy and handling of class A surface is awesome **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Ordered geometrical sets create more problem during design of the product **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** i use catia for design of automotive BIW and closure parts ### 34. Fully functional poor UX **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Every function you can. Imagine from 3d, surfaces, 2d, simulation, dva **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The ux is poor. Once you lose a button or change screen resolution, good luck! **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Other apps have better ux **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** 3d design, packaging and compatibility ### 35. Not user friendly **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 24, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Catia has many options for design work. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** It has a very outdated look. It does not follow the logic of traditional 3 d modeling softwares **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating fixtures ### 36. Great to design **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 28, 2018 **What do you like best about CATIA?** conceptual, and methodological software **What do you dislike about CATIA?** too much complicated sometimes, made simple things twisted **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** design problems solved, that is its one of a kind to use ### 37. Designing a car made easy **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2017 **What do you like best about CATIA?** The interface is very easy and it has lotsof simple tools to design a car either it may be plastic or castings or sheet metal **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Analysis using this software is not that flexible when compared to other cad tools **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used this tool to desing a rocker assembly and enginer parts of car ### 38. CATIA 5 for a Designer a.k.a. A Love and Hate Relationship **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Erdem B. | Senior Industrial Designer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2016 **What do you like best about CATIA?** - CATIA has a wide array of tools. If you have the right level of license, you can do anything; sheet metal design, surface design, mechanical design or assembly. - It is a widespread and well accepted software. Knowing CATIA is a big advantage career in design industry. - Filleting is a blast. I often import a sharp cornered data into CATIA and put fillets there, real easy and fast. - You can quickly check for continuity of multiple surfaces and find out naked or sharp edges. It requires very little effort. - I get fairly good support when I have troubles. Turkish representatives are quick to return when in toruble and they always check if you are doing well. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** - Figuritively, there are 50 types of license levels, working environments and so on. Yow will often find yourself switching between environments and licenses, just to perform very simple tasks. My company uses a very expensive license type just to enable us import and export STEP data and use some tools that we seldom use. - When you switch between licenses, you have to restart CATIA. Very annoying and time consuming. - When you connect a projector, it messes up your whole interface and all your buttons get lost or hide somewhere. - No backwards compatibility. - Modeling is not very intuitive. It took me 5 minutes to figure out that an unclickable selection box that asks for an axis input was actually meant to be right-clicked. ONLY RIGHT-CLICK?! Nothing happens when you left click, which is insane. - Investment costs are very high. Dassault brought cloud system with CATIA 6 but I did not have a chance to experience it. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** CATIA 5 is a platform of many tools and there are many licenses for it. You will not be able to do everything with just one license, so decide carefully when you buy a license. Inadequate licenses are a big problem when you need to do something which your license doe not include. CATIA 6 seems to be going towards a better direction, especially for designers. There are lots of CATIA versions and releases, do a good research which one to buy. Portability is another issue: you will need VPN services to work remotely on your laptop and always connect to Internet. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it to finalize my data that I created in a surface modeling software, in order to submit to engineers. I also do several minor modifications and finishing touches; for example closing surfaces, joining edges, trimming or capping holes. ### 39. Design and Modeling **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2017 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Catia has a wide range of abilities from creating to analzing designs. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Catia has a very cumbersome interface and licenses need to be checked in in order to use certain features. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Catia to perform human factors anayles and to inspect designs. ### 40. Catia V5 **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 13, 2017 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Design and simulation of structural assembly for both comercial aircraft and automotive **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Not any such most of the plastic and medical device industry don't use it **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Design of BIW sheet metal structure ### 41. Engineering tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Divyanshu M. | Team Coordinator, Design, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 03, 2017 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Catia is really powerful tool for detail analysis of Surfaces and parts. Its one of the best part design tool because of its Parameters and equations. Generative Shape design is extremely powerful **What do you dislike about CATIA?** I believe interface is bit complex till you not really used to off. And Catia is also very time consuming. Useless Error messages sometimes really annoy while working. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** I highly recommend to also try ProE since its bit faster and interface is also more user friendly. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Working in Automotive industry with Catia, Using it for surface evaluation, Package, Engineering, Cut Sections etc ### 42. Exceptional CAD for Aerospace **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel K. | Senior Design Engineer, Aviation & Aerospace, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 27, 2016 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Parametric capabilities that can be used to make changes, which are usually driven by customers, very quickly. Contextual design can be accomplished and maintained with publications that are a very powerful way to link models and build complex design interfaces to ensure proper functionalities that meet requirements. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Some error messages are clearly translations and do not give a clue how to resolve or a good way to reference what is the cause. Several default settings are very confusing and could be modified based on what industry you are working in to make experience more seamless, especially for new users. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** If you are working in an industry with complex designs and many constraints, CATIA is ideal and can handle many specialized functionalities with additional workbenches. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Design of airplane structures at a detailed level for manufacturing and certification of major aircraft builders. ### 43. Engineering and CAD modeling software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexander N. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2016 **What do you like best about CATIA?** I use Catia V6 currently, (V5 depending on the project) in my daily practice with my work. It is an incredible software which makes transforming your 2D designs into 3D models easy. It is incredibly good at stitching models closed for the use of 3D printing. Which, working as a product designer makes prototyping easier and more intuitive in my daily routine. Another great feature of Catia is the use of kinematics. When we are developing mechanical components for our designs, the kinematics tools help us to test them out before we begin physical prototyping. This helps to save us time and money on material costs **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Like most CAD software's, Catia can take some time to get used to. the change from V5 to V6 was a nice one, making the tools you use more often easier to locate and use. But overall I feel the layout as well as the graphics for the tools within the software could be more approachable. Also being bale to relocate your most used tools would make for a better experience. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Catia is one of the most powerful CAD modeling software's on the market. Although it is expensive, it is validated in its cost. It is an extremely useful software used by the biggest names in the industry. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** With the introduction of 3D printing into my workflow, a CAD software such as Catia make prototyping that much easier. Also the workflow between my department (design) and the engineering department is much simpler and easier when we both utilize Catia. ### 44. Catia everyday engineering review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Veljko A. | Aerospace Engineer, Defense & Space, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 12, 2016 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Very powerful software for wireframe and surface design, very good user interface almost the best there is. Part design is perfectly good there is no room for improving. Multiple commands available on double click on feature, very responsive. Best of all is ability to move thru different modules with one part or assembly, which gives an edge to usage of advanced features and possibilities. BEST WIREFRAME software on the market! AEROSPACE Sheet metal is a thing of the future. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Adding constrains in assembly mode could be better. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Time is money, when I need to design fast, and to surface something with lightning speed Catia is a weapon of choice, fast, agile, safe and sound, small size files, flexibility.... The list goes on and on for this one :) KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Time is money, when I need to design fast, and to surface something with lightning speed Catia is a weapon of choice, fast, agile, safe and sound, small size files, flexibility.... The list goes on and on for this one :) KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK. ### 45. Assistant Manager **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Automotive | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 13, 2017 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Its flexibility to use and ease for parametric modeling feature. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** The user interface of CATIA was not appealing and would recommend scope for improvment **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** CATIA is a good software for beginners , but there can be a lot of improvement with respect to user interface. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used to design forging die with CATIA. ### 46. CATIA **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 31, 2016 **What do you like best about CATIA?** The amount of detailing in the software, I could do everything with this, from designing plastics to analysis of parts etc. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** File management and file saving. I would also like to see light weight files and a better rendering interface. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** File sharing across different softwares like solidworks and CREO could be better. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use this software every single day for the past 6 years, I use it to design mechanical components. ### 47. mechanical Design with CATIA **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Morteza A. | Director/owner, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 16, 2016 **What do you like best about CATIA?** userfriendliness and easy parametric input and also easy drawing capabilities and good connections to finite element packages are the most important factors **What do you dislike about CATIA?** nothing was bad but it is highly heavy for computer so a good computer is needed even for simple drawings **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** for designing structures and mechanical components and assemblies, it is one of the best ones. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** design of structural components ### 48. CATIA Review - Great for aeronautical applications **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 29, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Its extremely good for creating detailed assembly and part drawings. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Its a little difficult to master as a software as it just has so many layers and levels of complexity. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** It takes a while to learnt the software well. So, please concentrate on learning the basics of the software first before going ahead to use it for your applications. It is unlike most other 3D CAD software and requires a certain level of expertise and complexity to use well. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Created drawings of parts and user defined elements using CATIA for aerospace components. ### 49. Powerful software but not very user friendly **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aaron J. | Project Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Software is very powerful, handles large assemblies well, good CFD and stress tools. Works well when working between multiple departments on the same assembly. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Powerful program but simple tasks in other programs are no longer simple in Catia. There are so many good features in other programs like Solidworks (who is also owned by the same company as Catia and costs significantly less). I have used other CAD programs, 4 years of Solidworks, 4 years of ProE, 3 years of Unigraphics, and 5 years of Catia. I used Catia for 2 years before switching to Solidworks for a different job. It really opened my eyes on how easy it was to do basic tasks in Solidworks. Coworkers would say "why are you doing it like that? Don't you know there is a button in Solidworks so you don't have to spend 30 minutes doing that?" I then switched back to Catia 3 years later again for a different job. It was very frustrating for me to go back to Catia after working so much faster and more efficiently in Solidworks. Catia is the least user friendly CAD program have used. I will list a few examples. There is not any way to spell check your drawings in Catia. Engineers are known for being bad at spelling. Solidworks has a spellcheck button. How hard would that be to add to Catia? Another example is assembly mode. There is no way to cut an assembly in Catia. You also can not adjust the datum plane sizes. They are fixed. You can't simply zoom in to make a datum bigger so it is easier to select. You also can not simply drag a new component into an assembly and or pattern it automatically like other programs. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** If you are in a large aircraft company, that is what they use, and get used to it. It will not change. It is painful to use, but a very powerful program. If you are not a large aircraft company, there are many other programs that will do 99% of what Catia will do, and at a fraction of the price. After using many different programs over the years, I think Solidworks is the best cad program. Very powerful, very easy to use, very efficient to use, significantly cheaper. Besides the aircraft industry, Solidworks is the industry standard for businesses. So it makes it easy to share files with vendors since you use the same program. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating aircraft propeller assemblies. CFD, and stress analysis. Design for manufacturing. We could have saved a significant amount of money and time with a different software, but the company used Catia exclusively. For what we were doing, there was no benefit to using Catia. If anything it hindered us. ### 50. Catia Is Fun! **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Zachary P. | Student, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 22, 2015 **What do you like best about CATIA?** Catia is a very powerful program and is capable of detailed analysis. I use Catia to evaluate the manufacturability of our product and develop tooling to aid in serial production of the product. After this process I use the program to aid in developing standard work documentation for production level personnel. **What do you dislike about CATIA?** Catia could improve the method in which it allows to you constrain elements in an assembly. It could be more user friendly in this aspect. If the constraining process were easier to follow it would be easier to design in the program. Caita has some VBA interfacing that is tough to learn without searching through internet forums. Specific help coding VBA as it relates to Catia would be a great plus in the help guide of the program. **Recommendations to others considering CATIA:** Caita is a great competitor to ProE that is more user friendly. **What problems is CATIA solving and how is that benefiting you?** Catia has been helpful in quickly designing shop and manufacturing aid tools. ## 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=4&qs=pros-and-cons§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-14+20%3A54%3A16+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=8ca4d368-d95c-4c73-b341-0d470bbf7e43&secure%5Btoken%5D=4f217b980266e631079484fcac60d2e94a8aee28a03f2dc6b38ad82b61ab04bf&format=llm_user) ## CATIA Integrations - [ENOVIA](https://www.g2.com/products/enovia/reviews) - [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 (683 reviews) - [SOLIDWORKS](https://www.g2.com/products/solidworks/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (628 reviews) - [Designcenter Solid Edge](https://www.g2.com/products/designcenter-solid-edge/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (596 reviews)