Community
Inventor Forum
Welcome to Autodesk’s Inventor Forums. Share your knowledge, ask questions, and explore popular Inventor topics.
cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Autodesk inventor VS dassault Catia

14 REPLIES 14
Reply
Message 1 of 15
terje.antonsen
23073 Views, 14 Replies

Autodesk inventor VS dassault Catia

Hi,

 

 

 

at my office we use both inventor and catia. there are often discussions and a general consensus from one side that catia is the king. with arguments like; all the car manufacturers use catia. Sometimes when a project gets big and slow in inventor it is often suggested to rebuild it in catia.

another consensus is that large assemblies are better handled in catia, and it doesn't slow down much.

I doubt this, and I am looking for the answer to why this is the general experience. 

I think: 

1. in catia they constrain everything to origin of assembly, and all the constraints update relative to this origin. (correct me if wrong, I am on the inventor-side, and know little in catia) IN inventor one can constrain parts to eachother, and this results in that the constraints are harder to calculate to eachother. True or false? comments?

2. one catiauser always says that in catia the camera rotates around the assembly, which is different to other cad programs in that the assembly rotates about the camera which is harder to calculate. I highly doubt th|i|s|. true or false?

3. in catia, functions to simplify the details,.like shrinkwrap is not needed according to the catia crew. true or false?

4. I think adaptivit y creates sluggishness between parts, like in 1, when the adaptivity is "impossible " to solve. when adaptivity is used, one has to remember how each sketch is built before doing changes to keep control of the outcome. comments?

5. default look/graphics in inventor is higher set, which makes things harder to run. parts in catia look simple and ugly. true?

6. if anyone can give an example of a known product which is massive, and built in inventor, I'd appreciate it.

7.  I'd really love some examples of what catia can do that inventor can't. 

 

 

14 REPLIES 14
Message 2 of 15
4donwan4
in reply to: terje.antonsen

Not sure if this helps with some performance settings or not? Cannot comment on the Catia side though.

http://www.synergis.com/uploads/2012-inv-performance.pdf

Regards,

Don

Message 3 of 15
RobJV
in reply to: terje.antonsen

You are comparing apples to oranges.  One is mid-range and one is high-end. 

 

Rob

Message 4 of 15

So far, to me, Inventor is the high-end application until I know what is better in catia.

Especially, useability, time in working through cutout files to acad, speed of production of drawings makes Inventor the better one for me. I'd like to know what makes catia the high-end app other than price. 🙂

Message 5 of 15
RobJV
in reply to: terje.antonsen

My experience is mostly in Inventor and other mid-range CAD packages. Catia provides high end Surfacing capabilities for one that cannot be matched in Inventor.
Message 6 of 15
Ktelang
in reply to: RobJV

Hello,

 

I agree with RobJV,

I had a chance to work in Catia long time ago and currently I am working in Inventor.

 

1.The two way editability in Catia V5 R14 was an interesting feature. (Drawing to model) it increases

the productivity of editing drawings/models at the same time.

2. The surfacing capability; undoubtedly makes Catia  "King" in those areas of design

3. It is a high end software - As it can do ergonomic design/generative shape design/ Advanced surfacing- A class surfacing/ It think piping/electrical circuit design are also available modules.

4. Catia V6 onwards the dyanmic in place editing of the model for designing a product is also one of the great enhancement. Similar which Fusion is TRYING to offer

 

All this said it depends on where you want to use it. What is your product requirement, whether Catia/Inventor is the right fit. Both the software can do certain set of common things which are in most cases needed for product development.

 

Example : If you are primarily Autocad company and trying Inventor then yes you might eventually find some interopability between these two software as they are both the products of Autodesk. Autocad 2012 onwards Inventor models can be used in Autocad for drafting.

 

Hope that give a brief idea

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Config :: Intel (R) Xeon (R) CPU E31245 @ 3.30 GHz, 16.0 GB, 64bit win7
Inventor 2013 and Vault Basic 2013
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message 7 of 15
bpl180
in reply to: Ktelang

 I worked for Dassault Falcon Jet which of course uses Catia. I wanted to comment on the loading of large files. In Catia there are two kinds of files one is native files while the other is .cgr. The Native file is the full on model with every bit of detail and these are the files where you do the actual designs. When you load an assembly it loads all the parts in visualization mode. In order to edit or modify a part you then have to put it in design mode. When parts are in visualization mode it does not have everything loaded that went into the creation of the parts so that it is using less memory. When you put it into design mode it brings all of that information in so that you can work on the parts. The .cgr file is a light file that does not include all the information which uses less memory and you cannot edit the parts. This format was created so that you could load large amounts of models to review entire designs such as the entire aircraft and not bod down your system. I hope this helps.

Message 8 of 15
howardlee306
in reply to: bpl180

One thing we noticed when we looked at the different software (we looked at all the mojor ones a year or so ago, had them come in and show us what they could do) was for the increase in some of the features performance and some shiny stuff it also cost more than all the tea in China. We almost vomited when we saw the price for only three people to use it.

 

Seemed like for a 10% possible increase in efficiency we would be stairing down a 175% increase in upfront cost and maintence fees. We could not justify the cost and stayed with Inventor.

Message 9 of 15
blair
in reply to: howardlee306

RobJV is correct, when it comes to "Surfacing" Catia is king. It's also king when it comes to price. Autodesk did purchase a company a couple of years back that developed T-Spline, which is good when it comes to "Surfacing" as well. I believe that the "Free-Form" in IV2015 makes use of T-Spline as well and produces "Light-Ready" surfaces which is required for the automotive industry.

Inventor 2020, In-Cad, Simulation Mechanical

Just insert the picture rather than attaching it as a file
Did you find this reply helpful ? If so please use the Accept as Solution or Kudos button below.
Delta Tau Chi ΔΤΧ

Message 10 of 15
Tobbe-65
in reply to: terje.antonsen

Inventor is more or less a disaster when it comes to large assemblies.
The performance decreases quickly when you pass 500 parts.


Inventor crashes often with large assemblies. The evil TIRC (Typical Inventor Random Crash) will be there.

 

The advantage of the inventor is that it is easy to learn and easy to use.
A pretty nice interface make it even better.
Inventor suits those who do not use large assemblies.

Message 11 of 15
Ray_Feiler
in reply to: terje.antonsen

Catia is a pain to use in my opinion. FWIW a lot of the automotive industry is moving to Siemens NX (deny this the Catia users will). The surface modeling of Alias is a close match to Catia. In Catia it's almost like skeleton modeling in Inventor with everything being adaptive, associative and very difficult to break the relationships. If one were to model everything grounded in place with no assembly constraints with Inventor it to would be more stable but it would not have the associative nature of Catia.

 

One more thing I just thought of. With Catia everything (and I mean everything) is a module. Yesterday I wanted to use Catia to open a SAT file version that Inventor did not support. Not so fast there buddy, you don't have that module, that will be another $$$ please.


Product Design & Manufacturing Collection 2024
Sometimes you just need a good old reboot.
Message 12 of 15
JavaLodge
in reply to: Tobbe-65

Just wanted to put in a counter-argument to this one. Right now I have an assembly open that has 689 unique parts and 1057 total parts. I'm not using any levels of details or shrinkwrapping on any parts, and I get no reduction in performance. In my experience, if an assembly is running slow it's my fault. If I haven't been disciplined in constraining things the right way, then it will slow down, especially when I try to move components.
____________________________________________________________
Slow is good and good is fast.
Message 13 of 15
pball
in reply to: JavaLodge

I'll also agree Inventor isn't slow with all large assemblies. I've had assemblies with over a thousand unique parts and double/triple that in instances. Also Inventor now has express mode which does improve loading times and such with large assemblies. I also heard it's supposed to be better in 2015, since it's pretty limiting in 2014 if you want to do anything other than look at the assembly.
Message 14 of 15
lidia.gebrehiwot
in reply to: Tobbe-65

Hello.

I want to learn Iventor ASAP. One on one is preferred and I will pay as asked. Pleas advice...thanks.

Message 15 of 15

Pm me

Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.

Post to forums  

Autodesk Design & Make Report