Ever need to quickly find out what version of CATIA created that file that just turned up from your customer? It’s an important 1st step, if you start working on your project using the wrong CATIA version, you may end up…

STEP files are part of the ISO standard ISO 10303 and are internationally recognised as a convenient way of transferring CAD files between different CAD systems.

It is becoming more and more common that CAD users are upgrading from CATIA V5 to CATIA V6 and CATIA 3DEXPERIENCE. Although the upgrade will bring increased functionality with ease of use, it can often be intimidating to use when…

September 20, 2016 If you are receiving a warning that informs you that you are using a graphics card which is not part of any certified configuration, there are two things that could be wrong: The Graphics Card itself is…

All DSLS licences have a max release date, meaning the date in the licence will determine the newest release of CATIA that you are able to use with this license.

Although it may not be obvious, there can often be a reason for overriding the default mass of a part in CATIA V5. For example a supplier of a part can only supply you with the mass and no material…

Having multiple versions of CATIA installed can sometimes cause issues with the CATIA settings.

It is becoming more common for designers to produce their own basic FEA analysis. This can be an intimidating task for a novice with little or no knowledge of FEA.

When parts are often used and/or shared amongst many users, it is normally easier and tidier to store them as part of a structured catalogue. Default ISO catalogues are available with every CATIA V5 install but may not fit the needs…

May 31, 2016 In CATIA V5, the mouse (or a Space Mouse, if used) can be used to control the position, orientation and zoom level of a model – and allows a great degree of control. Whilst for most situations…

When using Windows XP with CATIA, you can obtain a concurrent license from a server either using LUM or DSLS.

Under certain conditions, users may experience unusual behaviour when moving parts or sub-assemblies using the compass. It may appear that the part or sub-assembly being moved is not moving as the cursor is moved along the screen, only for it…

Dassault Systèmes CATIA is just one brand in their extensive portfolio of PLM products and solutions, specifically offering 3D design (CAD) capabilities. With such an array of solutions, it can be difficult to understand specifically which brand does what, which is why we have explained each brand in…

In the DMU Space Analysis workbench, it is possible to visually and geometrically compare old and new versions of the same model.

Sometimes there are a few critical problems within the CATIA software. A hot fix is a software maintenance package containing fixes for a small number of these issues.

May 17, 2016 In 2D Drafting, after creating dimensions it is possible to manipulate the leaders. When selecting the dimension that have been created, some white squares appear at the leader ends. These can be dragged by clicking the left…

By default, any projection or auxiliary views generated from a front view with either a broken or breakout view having been defined, will not carry the broken/breakout view definition.

CATIA V6R2013X: Working With An Unreliable Network Connection

February 17, 2016 Good news, it is officially 2016 now that CATIA V5-6R2016 (or as I like to call it CATIA V5R26) is now available for download! It comes packed with a few neat tricks too. To take a look…

Form, Fit and Function rules specify how much new revisions of a part can deviate from the original before new part numbers are created. This is key in ensuring components can be substituted without issue.

I get asked time and time again if there is an easier way to input multiple points into CATIA V5. The answer in short is, yes there is! Furthermore the functionality is available with every install on CATIA V5 and…

Under certain conditions, users may experience performance issues when moving parts using the compass – typically in assemblies with upwards of several hundred parts.

To carry out assembly machining, most people create a Derived Rep of the parts to be machined and then work on that. The problem with this method, is that the derived rep ends up in a 3dshape under the product and the…

Within the Assembly Design workbench in CATIA V6, there initially doesn’t appear to be a way of reordering the Product tree. The Tree Reordering icon is missing from the toolbars, and it appears that the only way to reorder the…

Some people may argue that the additional expense of having the Aerospace Sheet Metal Design tools is not worth it. However let me show you why I beg to differ!

January 26, 2016 Annotations can be made to a 3D part through, for example, the Text with Leader tool, within the Part Design workbench Annotations toolbar. Additionally, these can be viewed parallel to the screen by going to their Properties…

All customers using Windows that wish to upgrade to 2019x will be required to upgrade to Windows 10 if they have not done so already. They have not confirmed an exact date, stating that it will be released by the…

The alternative methodology to achieve a measurement via the part-based sectioning tool is to create a Positioned Sketch on a user defined sketch which contains an Intersect Projection of the required geometry (or body).

It’s not as simple as it sounds, but hopefully this article will help users understand how this can be done. In order to turn an isolated surface back into perhaps a ruled surface, you need to utilize the Formula Editor function.

If you allow your Windows 10 to update automatically, or if your local IT department push out Windows 10 on your behalf, this could potentially be harmful to your Dassault Systèmes applications.

More often than not, CATIA V5 users save their models in the correct release. The release number is often defined after the version number, for example CATIA version 5, realease number 20 would be known as CATIA V5R20.

Focus on Designing That’s why CATIA/ 3DEXPERIENCE has not only improved the way you model, but also has eliminated the aggravation and hassle of organizing your CAD data. The problem is with files. Old CAD systems constantly require engineers to locate, validate,…

In the follwing, our experts explains step by step how to apply a breakout view to multiple views.

In Short Dassault Systèmes introduces an all-new CATIA V5 integration to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform CATIA V5 data can be managed in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform “on-cloud” for the first time View CATIA V5 data and build/edit assemblies through a web browser, even on…

Know that Issue? Ever since the introduction of Java 7 updates 25, people have been having problems with accessing the Online Documentation provided by Dassault Systèmes. For those not aware, Online Documentation is essentially help files for the suite of…

Is your CATIA crashing whenever you attempt to create a new drawing view of a large assembly? Does the progress bar freeze without completing? If so, there are a few settings that you can change to improve your chances of…

Model-Based Engineering defines an approach to engineering that uses models, and that function as the technical baseline for a project and support the product throughout its full life cycle.

This summer I have been working as an Intern for TECHNIA & Integral Powertrain as a Design Engineer. I’ve recently completed my first year at the University of Portsmouth where I’m currently studying BEng Mechanical Engineering.

DISCLAIMER: Please only use the following method as a work around, it is NOT guaranteed but is a tried and tested method that has worked on occasions. This method should be performed at your own risk. Ever had an issue…

The standard ‘Out of the box’ Drawing Borders in 3DEXPERIENCE provide a basic solution for adding a frame and title block to a Drawing. The functionality will add a template to the background view and further options are provided to…

The DSLS Licence Administration Tool If you have a large pool of licences available on a single Dassault Systèmes License Server (DSLS), then it often becomes more difficult to manage the licences available. For example in CATIA V5, a single…

When using CATIA V5, the 'Save As' option can be used for creating a copy of an object which can then be used independently from the original file, often to evaluate different options during the development process. Sometimes, it is desirable to use…

One of the most asked Questions One of the most commonly asked questions by trainees on one of our CATIA V5 Fundamentals courses is “How do I put engraving on my model?” By this, they usually mean adding text in…

STL as a Standard File Format A Stereo Lithography (STL) file is a standard file format created by 3D Systems, USA. It also goes by other nick names of Standard Triangle Language, or similarly Standard Tessellation Language. It is a…

Some administrators of CATIA V5 within, or even outside of an organisation require access to CATIA V5 in “Admin Mode” in order to restrict certain options and/or implement certain design best practises via the use of standards. This can range…

Some of you may think, is it that time of year again already?! Dassault Systèmes has been busy rolling out the latest CATIA 3DEXPERIENCE 2017x release, but it has not forgotten its CATIA V5 companion. Dassault Systèmes have finally released CATIA V5-6R2017 (which most of you may…

If your CATIA icons have lost their default CATIA icon symbols and a preview thumbnail of the part is not available in Windows Explorer, there is a fix available. While this could be a symptom of having multiple versions of CATIA installed (read our…

This is usually used to group data by project. Different CS types exist but the general idea is to ensure that only users with a role granted on a Collaborative Space can view, amend and/or lifecycle the data.

Though composites have been around for a long time, it is still a science in the making with many aspects of composites yet to be discovered. Dassault Systèmes have offered many tools to make this discovery efficient and continue to…

In CATIA V5/V6/3DEXPERIENCE, users have the ability to convert data in batch mode. When using V6 and 3DEXPERIENCE, this will automatically import/export data from the ENOVIA database. The following example is performed using CATIA V5 but is identical in V6 and 3DEXPERIENCE. However, with V6 and 3DEXPERIENCE,…

CATIA V5 offers highly interactive finite element analysis capabilities for validating design.

We are committed in helping our customers and others resolve issues which they are experiencing. We are also committed in sharing our knowledge to the wider Dassault Systèmes (DS) user base. One particular issue I had faced with a customer…

In Part 1 we saw that the Installation and Equipment workbench can provide ease of installation, robust assembly behaviour and routine design reduction by automating the assembly on Electrical components. This post will show further capabilities on this topic, with a different combination of electrical links.…

CATIA Installation and Equipment is a workbench which deals with electrical components, assembly, harness installation, and so on…

In Finite Element Analysis, it is typical to wait during the calculation process. On the one hand, computers have become more and more powerful over the last decade, resulting in a reduction calculation time. But on the other hand, the user…

One of the problems of Dassault Systèmes possessing such a wide variety of products is that it can often be a bit of an issue working out what each of these products even does.

Dassault Systèmes announces support of 3DEXPERIENCE and V5 Offers on Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit Edition operating system.

It is very important that you have the correct Media installed when it comes to Dassault Systèmes products. CATIA V5 comes in two configurations, the older P2 configuration and the newer Edition 3 configuration. Although CATIA itself does not change,…

Want to measure directly from your monitor using a ruler but struggle to scale your CAD accordingly? Well let us show how you can do just that using Dassault Systèmes CATIA applications!

Design optimisation is the process of finding the best design parameters that satisfy project requirements. Optimisation of parameters, whether “minimisation”, “maximisation” or “approaching a target value” is an iterative process. Using the conventional, manual approach can be time consuming and…

CATIA can be customised for each individual user to improve the experience and speed up the modelling process. One of these customisations includes selecting your favourite workbenches for quick and convenient access.

Design optimisation is the process of finding the best design parameters that satisfy project requirements. Optimisation consists of “maximise”, “minimise”, or “approach a target value”, using a variety of parameters. Performing a conventional optimisation using manual iterations can be a…

The Digital Mock-Up (DMU) Kinematics workbench, available in CATIA, allows users to create simulations of assemblies. To have access to this workbench, the KIN product must be installed and available in your licence. For CATIA V5 PLM Express configurations, the…

To streamline the CAD design process, it is often easier to create a library of commonly used standard parts. The same principle can be applied to commonly used standards, and one of the more commonly used standards is the Thread…

With the recent release of Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE R2015x, some would ask what is different about these apps? For example, the part design app tools appear to be identical to the part design workbench tools of CATIA V5.

It is common to use the Remote Desktop feature within Windows to connect to another client machine or even the server to install and set up software, this is definitely advantageous as the machine could be in another location e.g.…

Most readers will be familiar with the usual method of helping to select an element that might be hidden behind others; namely the use of the up and down arrow keys.

For all new releases of V5 starting at R21 and all versions of V6 and 3DEXPERIENCE, DSLS (Dassault Systèmes License Server) is used to manage software licensing. Like most license servers, there needs to be a secure connection between the…

The SWEEP tool within CATIA V5 is a very useful tool. However it can have its limitations. One of the limitations is that the profile curve cannot be adapted along the sweep.

Sometimes when CATIA crashes or has not been closed down properly, the Basic Licence tool thinks the user is still using it. Unfortunately you cannot release the licence from the basic license tool or even remove it as it thinks…

The longest part of generating a decent CAD model is housekeeping! Users often assume that once the 3D CAD model is completed, it will never be touched again. However this is often not the case!

Microsoft windows update on 13/05/2015 (specifically KB3061518) seems to have an impact on DSLS connection protocol for levels lower than 3DEXPERIENCE R2015x.

Some of you reading this blog may have seen screenshots and videos of the new 3DEXPERIENCE platform, and seen something that looks like this: And you might be wondering, “What have they done to CATIA? It’s just like V4 to…

Tight project deadlines and stretched resource are day to day pressures seen across most business sectors, and no more so than in engineering.

When using CATIA, the user may find that using an operation alone does not give the required result. It is using a combination of tools that gives the user the required result. This is often a matter of playing around,…

There are many misconceptions associated with surfacing in CATIA V5, particularly that it is intimidating to use! In fact it is quite the opposite.

Dassault Systèmes quite often bring out new releases of CATIA V5. The most current release of CATIA V5 to date is V5-6R2015 (which is often referred to as R25), however not everyone using CATIA V5 are using the latest release. This can be…

Third Angle projection is a method of orthographic projection which is a technique in portraying a 3D design using a series of 2D views.  

Have you found that your recently installed CATIA V5-6R2014 install always crashes when you try to create a new VBA library or try to run a macro? This seems to only be the case when Microsoft Office products are not…

On a single machine you can run multiple versions of CATIA at the same time e.g. R18, R19 and R22. We have noticed that this is becoming more frequent that CATIA is using more than 1 license. To  eliminate this…

This short guide lists the steps to enrolling a DSLS nodelock license.

Has CATIA V5 been acting differently lately? Have there been recent stability issues? Does everything look different compared to how it first looked when you opened it? Are you unable to perform tasks that you were able to in the…

This guide will describe how to install LUM licenses onto your machine/server.

It can often become a tiresome iterative process designing a part, especially when the number of people involved increases. For simple analysis, the designer can validate their designed component(s) with respect to thickness, design, material, etc using the Generative Structural…

Users tend to rely on using the operating systems native tool for capturing screen shots or third party applications for recording the screen.

Aim: The aim is to be able to checkout\extract a license from the license server onto the client machine. Note: This is only for CATIA licenses Solution: 1) Copy & Paste the link below into your Internet Browser: ftp://ftp-ip.com/CATIA/i4_offline_mig_13.zip username: [email protected] password: download_1234  …

This guide contains the steps required to change from LUM licensing to DSLS licensing. Note: Ensure CATIA is closed before transition.

It can often become tedious for designers to keep changing multiple constraint values in CATIA V5, which will always equal to the same value, for instance in a sketch. If one value is changed, the user is then forced to…

Extract taken from Whitepaper “10 Reasons for Transitioning to CATIA V6” by TECHNIA’ 3DEXPERIENCE/V6 Specialist Technical Team

Extract taken from Whitepaper "10 Reasons for Transitioning to CATIA V6" by Technia' 3DEXPERIENCE/V6 Specialist Technical Team

There is now a quick and easy way to link one parameter value to another in CATIA. In this example we will look at linking two dimensions quickly in sketcher.

Extract taken from Whitepaper "10 Reasons for Transitioning to CATIA V6" by TECHNIA' 3DEXPERIENCE/V6 Specialist Technical Team

Extract taken from Whitepaper "10 Reasons for Transitioning to CATIA V6" by Technia' 3DEXPERIENCE/V6 Specialist Technical Team

Extract taken from Whitepaper "10 Reasons for Transitioning to CATIA V6" by Technia' 3DEXPERIENCE/V6 Specialist Technical Team

CATIA stands for Computer Aided Three dimensional Interactive Application

Many parts contain important features that the designer knows will be used in other parts, or to constrain the part in an assembly, such as hole centrelines, mating faces etc… There are three problems with this however: 1) Important features…

This is a useful tool for quickly making moulded plastic objects, such as drink bottles. However before making mould tools it is useful to analyse the draft angles and correct mistakes to ensure that the bottles can be successfully removed…

The PRE license gives access to various tools that can reduce the size of CGR models without losing key packaging information.

With CATIA V5 there is often a cost associated with additional functionality and it can become a dilemma to a user/company whether the tools available justifies the cost. In this example we will have a look at the PLM Express products GS1…

It can often be a nuisance to use the mouse and click on commands that are commonly used in CATIA V5. One of the most used commands, which will we use as an example in this article, is the Hide/Show…

Many different applications typically own their own file format. In the majority of cases, application developers allow users to also save their files in different formats, typically in ISO Standard formats.

It may be necessary for a CAD user to create a single part from an assembly of multiple parts. Most commonly this is done when analysing an assembly using other software. Each part within the assembly is converted into its…

It is common in CATIA V5 for a user to want to create text inside the sketcher workbench. Dassault Systemes have addressed this need in CATIA V6 where a tool is available for the user to simply enter text and use it! However no…

In the part design workbench users often have difficulty seeing the coordinate axis system. The following is a quick hint enabling users to control the coordinate axis system display size, allowing for a more comfortable CATIA experience.

Are you currently using CATIA V5 without any PDM system? Do you want a 30% improvement in productivity, 25% improvement in design change management and a 40% improvement in BOM (Bill of Materials) accuracy? Are you interested in the PLM…

The globalisation of engineering activities often involving design offices spread over various countries and multiple suppliers is a key factor in the quest to improve quality and reduce costs during development of new products.

Dassault Systèmes launches industry’s best multi-version compatibility with new V5 Release. The new release V6-native products and parts are now editable in V5. Still, advancement of V5 continues.

CATIA V6 has been released, and the improvements are significant. It offers users greater collaboration throughout the supply chain, as well as increased security of designs.