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My personal opinion is that if you have a part in catia format and you want this part in ProE format, the only solution is to find time to re-design it.
I don' t think it is a good idea to buy a translator to make this job for the following reasons :
1. You must re-check the part or assembly to see if the features, relations, mating relations, equations, e.t.c. issues to the transfered part or assembly,
2. You must keep your translator updated because as you know, both Dassult and PTC updated their programms every 6-8 months.
3. I don't think that every translator can carry the design efficient of the part or assemlby to the other program.
My proposal is to find a way to transfer your part or assembly as bode feature to your desired program (by iges, Catia Direct, e.t.c.), study it in the Pro/DETAIL module and rebuild it again, so you can keep your design intent high and efficient.
but some time it's need to much time to rebuil one part or assembly.
And we need to don't forget how dynamic is automotive & aviation inustry; the principal field of Catia users.
In many case it's the situation when you cannot redefine the part because the designer team don't want to give you to many informations. They make the design starting from concept and don't want to offer you this kind of information.
We have use these the Catia Dicect translators quite often and I can report a high level of success, and it's alot easier than using Catia directly. Catia uses all sorts of customer envinonment and set up files wich defines line types, maximum files sizes and general work environments. In pricipal if you want to read a Catia file into Catia you need all the environment setup files that were active on the system that created the original Catia file - very messy.
But the direct pro/e-Catia reader just reads the catia file (and no you don't need Catia installed on the machine you are using- just the PTC translator modules). You dont have to worry about environment settings at all.
In respnse to xcad's comments, yes the assys are assembled around a coorinates system rather than mating contitions. However as one who works int the automitive industry and is forced to work with multple cad envirnments, assy about a coorinate system has allot going for it. - Try replacing the first compent in a large assy and see how many mating constraints you have to redefine.
In short the Catia translators seem to work pretty well. If you are forced to talk to other companies who use different software You can rest easy knowing you can read their data. You can also open the part files and use it as a base for further feature creation on the imported feature (we are forced to do this regularly).
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