Well, I wasn't going to stick my nose in here, but here goes. Actually I suppose that I am truely a CATIA user, so this is where I am comming from.
Work at an aero. consulting firm, and we have many CAD Packages, CATIA, SW, Pro/E, and Unigr. as well as several 2-d packages, bc we do our work in the native format of our clients. Since I use all of these on a regular basis, I do feel like I have something to contribute to this topic.
Each has it's own good and bad features.
Each has it's place in this world.
I like SW, because of the ease of part creation.
I like CATIA for doing anything with a large assembly.
I like Pro/E for it's mid range features, and data translation tools.
I must say that of all the packages, SW was the quickest to pick up, but that said, the more advanced I become as a SW user, the more problems that I seem to run into. I try and customize the tools I use as much as i can and SW is the most Difficult to do this (overriding all the assumtions the software makes for you is a pain in the A#$), followed by CATIA. Pro/E is by far the easiest. That said, I was using SW in about 2 days whereas it took me about 2 weeks to pro/e it.
We are here waiting for CATIA and SW to eventually integrate better.
regards,