Going From CATIA V5 R20 to NX8

[rgavinsky]

Hello!

I'm brand new to this forum, and heard about it from my NX8 instructor. Does anyone have any quick reference guides for the engineering designer going from CATIA V5 R20 to NX8 to the transition more efficient?

What would be great is essentially a side by side command to command/acronym/term definitions comparison, or better still here's how you do this in CATIA, and then in the next column, here's how you do the same thing in NX8. I know I'm probably asking for the moon, but any external, personal references or "cheat sheets" available would be very helpful to myself and many of my colleagues at work.

Also, comparing the essence of the organizational development philosophy and/or operational methodology between the two major industry programs in a simple manner would be helpful to understand how to think differently for each program at the top level.

Okay now I am dreaming, but the strengths and weaknesses of each program would be gold.

Thanks!!!

Bob Gavinsky

Background Info:

I am currently using CATIA V5 R20 for air vehicle configuration design and have become somewhat proficient at most things in CATIA. However, my main skills for advanced concept new air vehicle designs are lofting OML surfaces, primary structural layout, and integrating all major systems and sub-systems. The job of an aircraft configurator involves preliminary aero sizing/stability and control/structures, the parallel integration of all major systems and subsystems such as propulsion, landing gear, flight controls, payloads, cockpits, fuel systems, ECS, EPS, avionics, mission systems, etc. to meet various mission requirements.

PS, Looking forward to communicating with some of you.

 

[JohnRBaker]

I'm not aware of any official 'side-by-side' command function comparisons, but one thing that you can do is use the 'Command Finder' in NX to find the functional equivalent of a Catia named command. you can find it at...

Help -> Command Finder...

Just enter the function name that you're familiar with and you'll get a list of the closest items in NX. Hovering your cursor over an item in the list will show you where the function can be found in the NX user interface while selecting the item will launch the function.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[FrankMalone]

My advice is go for NX8.5, there are some commands that catia users miss so much in NX. FYI those commands are:
1- Draft from non planar surface
2- Unite with region selection, a command similar to catia UnionTrim
3- Part Modules. From help: "Part Modules enable designers to divide the features in a single complex part into logical groups."
Basically it is intended to isolate the features history into part modules, avoiding a large history in the part.

Regards
Frank.