Differences between Autodesk Inventor and CATIA

[cencored]

Hi guys,
I am doing a thesis on the differences of Autodesk Inventor and CATIA for my university.
So far I have had some experience with Inventor, but absolutely 0 with CATIA.

I was wondering if you guys could help me out by explaining to me what the differences are, and why companies choose one over the other.
It would really help me a lot.

Thanks so much in advance.
Lenny

[Kev_Boy]

While I don't have years of experience in either application, I can say that CATIA and Inventor are very similar packages striving for a very similar market. CATIA tends to have more specialized upgrade packages - for example the aerospace and automotive sectors.



They both work on the concept of sketches that are driven by dimensions and constraints that through features create 3D models. Then you assembly them with constraints to finally make 2D drawings of your parts and assemblies.

Edited by: Kev_Boy on Oct 27, 2008 8:41 AM Edited by: Kev_Boy on Oct 27, 2008 8:42 AM

[Anonymous]

We use both so I can offer some imput. The first big difference is price.
Catia is much more expensive. The reason is it originiated from the upper
end of the market and has a greater range of tools for addressing it such as
more robust surfacing tools as well as fully integrated CAM and ETO modules.
Overall Catia is a much more powerful modeller, assuming you have purchased
the advanced modules.

There really is little difference between the basic solid modeling packages,
other than the fact that Catia's user interface is archaic which makes it
far less intuitive and easy to use as Inventor. Working with the two, I've
found features in each that I wish the other would adopt.

One big one I'd like to see in Inventor is the seperate "bucket" for
non-solid entities. The linear tree of Inventor makes it difficult to use
the same surface multiple times. If you trim it, everything downstream can
only see the trimmed face. The only way to use it again is to move the EOP
up and make another copy of the face in the tree. I've got models that have
the same face copied 4-5 times right together in the tree since I need to
use it multiple times downstream. Catia has this linear workflow as an
option, which they call "hybrid modelling" but they don't recommend that
users employ it. Inventor has the pontential for a non-linear workflow like
this with the "Construction" environment, unfortunatly, parametrick
relationships do not survive.

In Inventor's favor, creating almost any entity is much easier than in
Catia. Every function in Catia is its own dialog box, rather than being
logically grouped like in Inventor. "Extrude Add" is a DIFFERENT dialog box
than "Extrude Subtract". This is a typical example.

Also, Inventor's splines are much better than Catia's. Catia just gives you
more things to do with them.

Lastly, Catia's evolution has been very slow compared to Inventor's. Major
revisions only occur once or twice a decade with only service upgrades in
between. When they do push a new version the difference is so striking that
it's like a whole new application. I think that the more consistance
progression of Inventor's annual releases makes it easier to stay
continually productive. Especially with the aquisition of Alias and the
rate of change of both products, I can envision Inventor being the equal of
Catia within a few years. The same could of course be said of other
mid-range packages such as Solidworks and Solidedge. Of course that's
assuming Catia doesn't step up and do something extraordinary.

Patrick

[cencored]

Thanks a lot for taking time to reply in such great length, Patrick. I have found some useful information, please if anyone knows other differences between those two products and how they are utilized by whom, that would be very helpful.
Any additional bit of information is greatly appreciated by me.

Thank you. Edited by: cencored on Nov 19, 2008 5:09 AM

[Anonymous]

You'll get better info on Catia reading a Catia group.
A fellow traveler ...
http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=231166&page=1