Buying catia or other cad

[thestigm5]

I was wondering: what cads other than catia are really excelent?

and how much does catia cost?

Cand anyone just buy catia or do you have to be a huge corp?

[rjsa]

I was wondering: what cads other than catia are really excelent?

and how much does catia cost?

Cand anyone just buy catia or do you have to be a huge corp?

What exactly do you have in mind as an use for it?

[flynfrog]

You can buy it but its going to be $30,000 a seat I believe.

You could look at its cheaper cousin solidworks and possibly get an educational copy if you are not using it for business

[thestigm5]

planning ion using it just to basically mess arounf=d design cars, planes

[rjsa]

planning ion using it just to basically mess arounf=d design cars, planes

Try http://www.rhino3d.com.

In a car design environment, two software are used. Alias Auto Studio for free form/concept design and CATIA for engineering/fabrication. Both priced in multiples of $10,000.00

You can have a poor mans version of the combo using Rhino and SolidWorks, many smaller companies use that. For the sole purpose of messing around a student version of Rhino will be priced bellow $300.00.

[The FOZ]

I've used AutoCAD, and SolidWorks extensively, and spent a bit of time on Rhino3D.

AutoCAD is a waste of time, IMO. Line and drawing based drafting just doesn't lend itself to good 3D designs, or make it easy to generate complex assemblies. And the 3D engine is pretty much as sophisticated as cave paintings.

Rhino...I never could get my head around. It just wasn't intuitive to me. So I let my demo expire, now I get emails from Rhino every month or so...lol

I do like Solidworks, because it seems to be relatively simple to get going with. It is a little bit un-intuitive in terms of the user interfaces, for example, when drawing a line, you draw the line, then have an opportunity to set the length automatically...but if you happen to move your mouse in the meantime, it's already moved on and you can't manually enter a length. Then, on the flipside, if you were, say, drawing a sheet metal flange, you'd specify the flange location, then you put in the length, rather than how lines work.

It's decent, but a bit buggy. 2009 seems to be an improvement in some respects.

[Carlos]

thestigm5
I've become interested in a related field and have done some research.

This cardesign site has recommended Blender and GIMP as freeware alternatives to programs like Rhino and Maya.
http://cardesignnews.com/site/home/
Blender
http://www.blender.org/
GIMP
http://gimp.org/
Freeware CAD
http://www.freecad.com/

Microsoft just bought Calagai this year and to spite Goggle is giving away free copies of Truespace. Similar to GIMP, Blender, Maya, Cinema 4D and Rhino. There's a comparison chart at Calagari. Truespace - It's large - 130MB program. also a manual is available there - 50MB and video tutorials 100+ MB. Download site:
http://www.caligari.com/products/trueSp ... isonTables

You can also find most programs as OEM downloads for less a lot less than retail although most of them are software pirates. This next site is just plain interesting. Microsoft Labs just put this up on the net last week. You have to download software to use it. There is also a demo to watch without the download. Photosynth stitches pictures together into a environment allowing you to explore the visual collage from any angle, any perspective, in 3D.
http://photosynth.net/default.aspx

[West]

I paid 500 bucks for this simple demo.

http://www.practicalcatia.com/

They give you a certificate at the end if you complete the course. If you need a license extension they will give it to you for free. It helped me get my current job although I never really use most of it.

Edit: looks like they don't offer the "at home" course anymore.

[rjsa]

I've used AutoCAD, and SolidWorks extensively, and spent a bit of time on Rhino3D.

AutoCAD is a waste of time, IMO. Line and drawing based drafting just doesn't lend itself to good 3D designs, or make it easy to generate complex assemblies. And the 3D engine is pretty much as sophisticated as cave paintings.

Rhino...I never could get my head around. It just wasn't intuitive to me. So I let my demo expire, now I get emails from Rhino every month or so...lol

I do like Solidworks, because it seems to be relatively simple to get going with. It is a little bit un-intuitive in terms of the user interfaces, for example, when drawing a line, you draw the line, then have an opportunity to set the length automatically...but if you happen to move your mouse in the meantime, it's already moved on and you can't manually enter a length. Then, on the flipside, if you were, say, drawing a sheet metal flange, you'd specify the flange location, then you put in the length, rather than how lines work.

It's decent, but a bit buggy. 2009 seems to be an improvement in some respects.

BTW, nowadays Rhino demos will last for 25 saves, no time bombs. And the Rhino news group is the best support availiable in the CAD industry.

[SpookTheHamster]

We use UGS NX 5 at uni, which seems to be a pretty high end solution: the price rivals CATIA at some points. I quite like it, it's simple enough to be useable but it still has a lot of power.

At my last job we used Solidworks Office 2008. I could tell it was a lot simpler than NX, which made it in some ways easier to use but at other times it was just too simple.

It was definitely faster to get a pretty model in Solidworks, so if you only plan on messing around then I'd probably choose that.

[carvetia]

I don't think anyone mentioned that you can download the Personal Learning Edition of Alias Studio for free. It's fully featured and has no time limit.

See this:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/in ... id=8412665

[RacingManiac]

I believe Pro/Engineer also have student license you can obtain for it....our Formula SAE team uses that to do all the CAD work...

[bassimon]

Catia also has a student license you can buy - if you are a student, obviously.
The 365day licence will cost you $149,00 and seems to contend all reasonable components. But I never used it so I cant say anything about restrictions. But I remember seeing a message 'this part was created with a student version' or something similar...

http://www.catiastudent.com/student_overview.htm

[slimjim8201]

I use Catia, Unigraphics NX, Inventor, SolidWorks, SolidEdge, Pro/E, CoCreate, and Spaceclaim for my job. For a novice user, I would stay away from Pro/E and Catia in particular. Inventor and SolidWorks are much cheaper and easier to use and still pack a ton of advanced functionality.

My personal favorite is NX, but it is just as costly as Catia.

Pro/E is on the way out, thankfully.

[PlatinumZealot]

Can you guys post some samples?