CATIA vs. Enovia

CATIA is probably the most preferred 3D modeling tool in the automotive and aerospace industries. This specific surface (it can be handled well by the experienced users) is well suited to use parametric design principles and hence result in great products. One of the issues we have in the automotive industry is to work with large surfaces for body exterior (main body, gate, hood.) or interior trim (door, headliner.) panels. CATIA enable us to design surface perfectly through the lines. Also, assembly features for intricate designs (gearbox, exhaust, engine, suspension.) are more than adequate. I did not find any inefficiency while designing products with CATIA. Only the interface and handling of the menu and mouse is not the best - or at least you need time to get used to it.

Incentivized

For Enigineering function, Enovia does well. However, their Project Management could be improved. We have found exporting to MSProject to work and then importing the updates is the best option. However, we would prefer to work directly in the Project Space in the future.

Incentivized

• There really is no 3D software that offers all the design modules, drafting and assembly options and manipulation tools that CATIA offers.
• There are a specific module and tool for just about anything you need to do, so the design process with CATIA can be very optimized.
• Great surface modeling capabilities.

Incentivized

• Issue tracking
• Approval flow (Routes)
• Change Management

Incentivized

• Updating an existing design can become really frustrating. You have to reassign all the radiuses, for example, even if they moved slightly.
• CAE function is not that good.
• Radiuses are slightly bad and can cause you lots of problems.

Incentivized

• When a part/assembly has been released in Enovia and gone for production or downstream processing, Enovia doesn't have much control, hence, Enovia should come up with an easy controlling mechanism for various disposition of parts and seamless communication with an ERP or downstream process.
• If a document is linked to thousands of materials then revising this document takes long time gets floated to the BOMs where the previous document versions are used. So, Enovia should have an efficient way to replace the floating process or another efficient mechanism for document revision processing.

Incentivized

It is a good software for conception. But it is too hard sometimes to work with and understand the different options available

I generally contact with IT or internal CATIA support team, so I cannot comment in detail. I remember we have struggled to move to v6 update, and it required a long and detailed work to update all the systems. There were some times we had limited support from Dassault, but it is normal for a company of our size. So I cannot criticize much.

Incentivized

Once major advantage I realized when using CATIA is surface modelling, and modifications or changes in part model later. SOLIDWORKS provide a really good and quick way to part modelling. However, part modifications and assembly modifications take time. In CATIA, complex geometries can be easily generated, when compared to SOLIDWORKS. Managing and updating designs of large scale models and complex geometries made me realize an advantage of CATIA over other CAD software.

When evaluating Enovia as a PLM product the following Enovia stacks came out as a positive feature compared to other PLMs available on the market. 1. User-friendly interface 2. Easy to Integrate with CAD systems for the manufacturing Industry 3. It is quite easy to implement the Interface with ERP/MRP system (like SAP, Oracle manufacturing) 4. Availability of 3rd party ENOVIA -SAP interface and easy to plug in between two systems

Incentivized

• The ease of modeling helps a lot to save time, in both modeling new parts and also assemblies, which in the end makes a great positive impact on the development.

Incentivized

• Easy learning curve for the users- Very user-friendly Interface for Engineering central make the users happy and easy to learn the BOM creation and Engineering change management process.
• Time-saving - Seamless Creation and revision process of objects saves a huge amount of time compared to other systems.
• Easy to copy existing business data and modify them as required.

Incentivized