Switching from Catia to Solidworks

[eliou]

Hello,

I've been using Catia for a while now and I'm thinking of switching to solidworks since it's a lot cheaper. Has anyone else done the same thing? And if so, did it take a long time to make the transition for solidworks, or is the interface pretty much the same as catia?

Thanks!

Regards,

Edwin Liou

 

[J-C]

What version of Catia are you on?

We switched from Catia V4 to SolidWorks around 98. V5 wasn't out yet. V4 and SolidWorks are very different. I think V5 and Solidworks however are somewhat similar.

We pretty stopped using Catia and went to Solidworks with no real transition. Big reason was you don't really ever own Catia, you are leasing it. We stopped paying maintenance on it to help pay for Solidworks and we found out that Catia would stopped working after a certain date. I bulk STEP translated all our models and bulk DXF translated the drawings.

The step models worked ok in Solidworks but we often remodeled stuff to take advantage of having parametrics. Really large assembly drawings were kept in 2d and were edited in Autocad LT. I guess we could have brought them into the Solidworks drawing just as 2d but at the time (swx 98), the 2d editing capabilities weren't too good. You could also now use DWGeditor since its included.

Jason

UG NX2.02.2 on Win2000 SP3
SolidWorks 2006 SP5.0 on WinXP SP2

 

[eliou]

I've been using catia V5, and have never had experience with V4. I was looking the SW website and noticed that it looked pretty similar to V5, eg. spec tree, assembly constraints, sketches, pad/pockets etc. I guess I'm wondering if I would need more training in order to be able to pick up SW.

 

[GoWithTheFlo]

The basics are the same between the two. Kind of like the difference between Inventor and SW.

At the begining you will probably swear because things works differetly than in CATIA and your habits will have to change.

But all in all, they are pretty much the same as they both have, as you said, ''spec tree, assembly constraints, sketches, pad/pockets etc''.

My personal opinion, unless you NEED Catia for some specific reason, switch to SW, if only for the price.

 

[J-C]

If you haven't experienced v4, then you should have no problem using SolidWorks. So luck for you, a partial labotomy isn't required.


I'm still trying to forget I ever used Catia v4.

Jason

UG NX2.02.2 on Win2000 SP3
SolidWorks 2006 SP5.0 on WinXP SP2

 

[eliou]

haha thank god I never had the "pleasure" of using V4.