What is CATIA?
CATIA, stands for Computer Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application,
CATIA is the most powerful Knowledge based and widely used CAD (computer aided design) software of its kind in the world. CATIA has been created by Dassault Systems of France and is marketed & technicaly supported worldwide by IBM.
Where is CATIA used ?
CATIA is being used by designers, manufacturing facilities, assemblers, architects, industrial engineers etc. Have a Look around you. Everything and Anything you see had to be designed before manufacturing.
The desk you are using, the chair you are sitting in, your daily use appliances, your car, your home etc. The list is almost endless. Nearly Everything is being designed on computers. CATIA plays a major role in the design process. CATIA is being used by the majority of automotive and aerospace industries for automobile and aircraft products and its auxiliaries and tooling design. Thousands of Engineering companies throughout the world over are using CATIA. A Company using CATIA has suppliers using CATIA too, thus making CATIA a Essential tool.
The most commonly CATIA users are generally Aerospace, Appliances, Architecture, Automotive, Construction, Consumer Goods, Electronics, Medical, Furniture, Machinery, Mold and Die, and Shipbuilding industries. CATIA has played a major role in NASA's design of the various Space equipments. Beside this CATIA has also been used as Vital tool for designing "jet-fighter" aircraft, aircraft carriers, helicopters, tanks and various other forms of weaponry extensively used by the Defense Sector.
Catia is used throughout the North American and European continents, as well as Australia. Apart from this CATIA is increasingly being used by Asian countries like India, Japan etc.
The following are just a few of the 20,000 + companies now using CATIA worldwide
Air Bus , Kelsey-Hayes , Boeing, Lear Jet , BMW, Volvo, Black and Decker, Fiat Peugeot, Northrop Grumman Corp, Ferrari, Lockheed Martin , Porsche , Daimler Chrysler, Goodyear, Freightliner Truck , Allied Signal , Sauber Formula,Volkswagen, Pratt Whitney, United Airlines, Toyota, Hyundai , Ford, Mercedes-Benz , Honda
CATIA – Everywhere…
87% of civilian/ commercial airplane designers use CATIA.
79% of helicopter designers use CATIA, and 50% of military airplane designers use CATIA.
76% of the world's aircraft designers use CATIA - clearly CATIA is the world standard for aircraft design.
51.6% of all the cars built in 2000 were designed with CATIA. More than all other CAD design engineering products combined together.
14 out of the Top 20 automotive manufacturers use CATIA as their core design system.
CATIA 3D product development is now used by 22 of the top 30 global automotive manufacturers and is the de facto global standard in automotive manufacturing.
CATIA is used to design a wide variety of products, including pottery, dental equipment, ski boots, artificial limbs, playground equipment, coke bottles, silent compressors, golf clubs, cardiac pumps, virtual reconstruction of a bombed cathedral, etc.
Some other industries include, Appliances, Architecture, Construction,
Consumer Goods, Electronics, Medical, Furniture, Machinery, Mold and Die, Shipbuilding and Aerospace, CATIA has played a major role in NASA's design of the Space Shuttle.
CATIA is used to design pleasure cruisers, yachts, tankers and submarines.
4 out of the top 5 locomotives and rolling stock manufacturers use CATIA.
More than 50% of CATIA customers have 5 seats or fewer.
The top 10 engineering companies in the Fortune 500 corporations use IBM PLM products and services
Data Source & Coutesy: IBM 11/01
Whats new in CATIA V5 Release 20.......
CATIA V5R20 leverages collaboration and productivity with CATIA Composites solutions:
• Enables seamless collaboration between engineering and manufacturing thanks to full generative manufacturing part creation taking into account engineering requirements. The manufactured part is automatically created from and synchronized with the engineering part, taking down the turnaround time from a day to minutes.
• Offers concurrent working on the same composite part, later merging and synchronizing separately designed stacks into a single manufactured composite part.
• Delivers significant gain in productivity thanks to the new grid-based design methodology which automatically generates plies by taking each cell’s composite specifications defined during simulation and applying composite design best practices.
• CATIA V5R20 ICEM shape design solution provides the full ICEM capabilities augmented with the V5 values: Associativity, Capture and Reuse, Know How capitalization and Business Process workflow integration.
• CATIA V5R20 delivers top requirement for the aerospace industry by promoting openness and collaboration for STEP Interface: It advances large assembly archiving with nested assembly support and will include full composite data and FT&A in the standard STEP format. This enables long-term archiving of this data, as well as improves data exchange between different CAD formats.
• CATIA V5R20 fully addresses powertrain processes. Functional modeling allows users to design components such as oil pans, gear boxes, or motor brackets up to 40% faster than the competition. It also enables extended collaboration on complex components designed simultaneously by multiple users.
V5R20 Accelerates Realistic Simulation:
SIMULIA Inside V5 for Enhanced Analysis: SIMULIA Extended Analysis allows V5 users, including designers, to simulate real-world nonlinear or thermal behavior of their products with proven Abaqus FEA technology.
• Nonlinear analysis capabilities now allow users to accurately simulate large displacements, complex contact interactions, and highly deformable materials such as rubber and plastic.
• Integrated thermal analysis functionality enables V5 users to improve product performance by analyzing the effect of temperature distribution in parts or assemblies, such as electronic circuit boards, automotive engines, or consumer appliances such as stove-tops.
• Rule Based Meshing: This new product enables V5 analysis users to capture their knowledge and define meshing rules to automate the creation of high quality surface meshes. Other V5 users can then select their target simulation application such as noise and vibration, durability, or crash, and have a mesh created automatically, accounting for element quality and geometric features such as holes and fillets. This results in greater efficiency, improved mesh consistency, and greater confidence in simulation accuracy.
• Improved Analysis of Composite Materials: V5 analysis capabilities enable users to simulate the structural integrity of composite layups defined in CATIA Composite Design (CPD). Improvements in simulation post-processing capabilities enable ply-per-ply post-processing of analysis results using ply names.
V5R20 Improves Digital Manufacturing and Production:
• Enhanced DELMIA Work Instruction Composer: The easy to use Work Instruction Composer application enabling configured shop floor Instruction authoring has been enhanced to support, among many additions, advanced synchronization of work instruction changes to design changes, multi-view support for operations and support for data collection, buy off and change notification operations resulting in a more efficient and complete coverage of this key A&D business process.
• Extended NC Milling Operations: New finishing and high-speed milling operations reduce machining programming time, tool path execution time and tool wear. These enhancements to the already robust V5 machining solutions help the machine shop both plan and produce faster, with better quality and less cost.
• Robotics Process Coverage: V5R20‘s painting package, developed in close collaboration with our partner CENIT, extends robotics programming, simulation and offline programming of DELMIA solutions in the paint domain. The rich robot library of DELMIA is also enhanced in V5R20 with new additions to support more accurate realistic robot simulations.
V5R20 Enriches Collaborative Innovation:
• Enhanced CAD integrations: New integrations, including support for SolidWorks 2009, Solid Edge v21, Inventor 2010, and AutoCAD/Autodesk Mechanical 2010, extend ENOVIA SmarTeam’s openness and enhance design collaboration.
• Real time production environment monitoring: Accelerates deployment of ENOVIA SmarTeam implementations and optimizes maintenance & support.
• Improved configuration and change management: Multiple ENOVIA VPM enhancements enable smarter, more knowledgeable engineering decisions.
• Seamless replication and reconciliation automation, flexibility and security: Simplifying collaboration with the extended enterprise and supply chain when using ENOVIA VPM.
DataSource &Coutesy:IBM & Dassault Systèmes
What job opportunities are there?
With more and more companies adopting CATIA as their primary CAD system, there are never enough CATIA designers to fill the world-wide demand.Please visit Search CATIA jobs page link to explore the CATIA job oppurtunities.
What is the Salary potential for designers with CATIA knowledge?
publishes a "Salary Survey" every year. Please to subscribe to their online magazine. It's free!
to see the Survey of Average Salaries being offered to CATIA workers