No doubt muadib3d, at the end of the day, its whoever presents their software better. I worked for many companies in my career, contracting my services in industries ranging between medical and defence doing all sorts of CAD design and FEA analysis, jumping between different types of CAD and FEA software (Including CATIA and Pro/E), and from the end users point of view its whatever he/she is confortable with or whatever they are used to using. We all need to do our jobs efficiently in one way or the other no matter what we use.
In these debates, what I found to be the "wrong" (or fruitless)thing to argue about is the feature-by-feature argument!! So the point of CATIA can do a sweep better than Pro/E in this version is irrelevant to the capabilities of the software. Usage and the control (design change and reuse) of the CAD data at the end gate is what it's all about in this day and age. These days CAD is not about functionality anymore but rather the control of the data with the help of PLM etc...
Someone in thsi thread mentioned that Boing or Lockheed use CATIA or Pro/E to do their designs... Thats true, but that is NOT in their entire departments!!! This is the more confusing thing about these debates and takes us back to the END USER and where each software is more appropriate to use, once again! I have worked in companies that have numerous CAD seats (500+) with different CAD packages and different platforms! Strange?? Not really, because industrial designers would use one package, one department would use Pro/E for their chassis design (because in cases like that Pro/E handles the engineering aspect more efficiently), whileanother departementuses CATIA for the body work of a vehicle (because CATIA issuperior in handling large component surface flows). And this is a typical example for MANY companies. The challenge is to be able to marry all these CAD data into the one product and be able to control design change at the end gate, so now its more of a global (PLM) control game rather than feature by feature competition of the CAD software!
In these debates, what I found to be the "wrong" (or fruitless)thing to argue about is the feature-by-feature argument!! So the point of CATIA can do a sweep better than Pro/E in this version is irrelevant to the capabilities of the software. Usage and the control (design change and reuse) of the CAD data at the end gate is what it's all about in this day and age. These days CAD is not about functionality anymore but rather the control of the data with the help of PLM etc...
Someone in thsi thread mentioned that Boing or Lockheed use CATIA or Pro/E to do their designs... Thats true, but that is NOT in their entire departments!!! This is the more confusing thing about these debates and takes us back to the END USER and where each software is more appropriate to use, once again! I have worked in companies that have numerous CAD seats (500+) with different CAD packages and different platforms! Strange?? Not really, because industrial designers would use one package, one department would use Pro/E for their chassis design (because in cases like that Pro/E handles the engineering aspect more efficiently), whileanother departementuses CATIA for the body work of a vehicle (because CATIA issuperior in handling large component surface flows). And this is a typical example for MANY companies. The challenge is to be able to marry all these CAD data into the one product and be able to control design change at the end gate, so now its more of a global (PLM) control game rather than feature by feature competition of the CAD software!