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.
It is fully capable of all the design work you can give it. I have even designed houses with it. Turbo CAD Pro Platinum is all I have used for going on 3 years now. I don't know if other versions can do or can't do. If you are a graphic designer, you would need to port the files to a higher end program to manipulate the colors and renderings. For engineering and in-house work it is perfect.
TurboCAD does all of the things we need it to do and some. The wide variety of options to create specificity in each of our projects is a large plus. The reason it was given a 9 is because the learning curve can be a little steep and sometimes certain processes are not as intuitive as they could be
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.
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.
TurboCAD is a well-priced solution for a small business, it comes standard with 3D modeling compared to DraftSight which does not. The user interface could be updated along with industry-standard shortcut keys but for the number of drawings we do, this package fills the gap. The DXF / DWG feature could be worked on too, as above, trying to get in line with other packages like AutoCAD & DraftSight would make the whole package better. All in all, I believe that TurboCAD has a valid foothold in the CAD industry.
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.
