CATIA SUCKS
I have been professionally using SolidWorks for 8+ years. In both aerospace and product design. I am now getting into the automotive and aerospace environments that use CATIA. I am amazed at how clumsy, old fashioned, and inefficient the CATIA user interface is.
I just finished an advanced surface modeling course with a professor who has been teaching for 10+ years. Watching him stumble through rotating models, getting unknown errors, and many steps are necessary to create geometry is cringy.
The mouse gestures in SolidWorks, clear workflow, amazing spec tree, clear organization of feature folders, quick mating options in assembly mode, easy drawing editing abilities, rapid dimensioning features, effective part rotating, etc are amazing.
It seems that CATIA is decades behind in so many categories. I understand they can handle large part and assembly files and also handle surfaces well. But give me a break with the interface. It is so uninspiring to work with graphics that look they were made on a gameboy.
I'm wondering if CATIA will get booted by a company like NX who seems to be more progressive.
4 Answers
I guess you are unware of mouse shortcuts to better manipulate the view.
hold middle click and drag = pan
hold middle and right click and drag around = 3d rotate
hold middle click, then right click (keeping the middle click pressed), release the right click only, and drag back and forth = zoom
middle click on the model will center it on screen and also it resets the sphere center of 3d rotate to that point, so it turn really well around the model.
CATIA is a more like a programming thing. You need all variables set, and can't create loopholes. If they are present, then those unexpected errors have a reason. (and for an experienced users, those are quite expected and easly identifyble what is causing the problem)
As for the interface appearance... well there are 3 flavors P1, P2, and P3 settable in tools-options. P2 is V5 interface, P3 is the newer V5-6 interface, P1 never bothered with it.. V4?
And for the model visualization as default it gives a very crisp geometry but not very pleasant to watch. The default settings are made so it can deal with large assemblies with lots of geometry.
Catia can be made to look quite nice. Enable openGL for model display, turn z-buffers, AA16x, high quality shader, etc. But all of these settings robs processing power and if a large assembly is opened it will be very unusable.
So if you don't deal with 300+ parts assemblies all the time, and have the hardware you can tweak some of those options to make it more nice to look at.
Other than that, i can agree at first glance CATIA (in P2 config, default settings) looks ancient. But the parametrization and the math behind the geometry is very solid indeed.
At least Catia does not autocorrect and assumes something behind your back. If the input is not clear or ambiguous, that is user error. Other programs have all sorts of autocorrection that makes a pretty complex geometry to resolve an issue but it doesn't tell you when, what, where or how that autocorrect works. Inventor has bitten my a** a few times with odd automatic functions.
After using (and teaching) CATIA V5 for many years, I had a hard time when I tried to learn SolidWorks for a recent project. My initial thought was "SolidWorks sucks" but over time and with more experience I became more familiar and skilled with it.
So which version of CATIA are you frustrated with? If you're complaining about Version 5, then you're right about it being old - it came out over 20 years ago, and it was Dassault's first use of Microsoft's Windows interface. Have you tried Version 6? How about the new 3DExperience? Those newer interfaces might be more to your liking.
Since each 3D CAD system seems to have it's own way of manipulating (panning, zooming, rotating) the model, have you tried something like a Space Navigator? This is a good solution for a common manipulator, and much better than using a mouse.
I just started learning Catia as I am interested in getting into the space industry. I can't say Catia sucks, but the user interface definitely does. Not user-intuitive at all. After using it for 10 minutes, I had to google to see if v5 is the latest version or I had downloaded a 90's version.
And after using it for 1 hour, I can't stop thinking why they would not make the interface look a bit like SolidWorks. It doesn't even have Tabs - as if the software hasn't been updated since the 90s.
The capability though is way beyond SolidWorks.
