Does CATIA work on Windows
In my experience, R18 of CATIA 5 aborts during installation on a Vista 32bit operating system. It will install and run on a Vista 64 bit operating system and Windows 7 operating
system. However, the licensing server
won’t run on Windows 7 yet. Dassault
will probably sort out this problem with a release in 2010 or early 2011. CATIA
v6 installs and runs on Windows 7. And yes, Catia V5 can run on a Unix
platform.
Here are some basic system requirements
that you should follow to make sure you can install and run CATIA v5.
• Your workstation needs to be at minimum
an Intel Pentium III or Pentium 4 based.
• Memory: 256 MB of RAM is the minimum
recommended for all applications. 512 MB of
RAM is recommended for DMU applications.
These days a Windows workstation will come with a lot more RAM, which is very
helpful. The more the better, at least
2GB to run well.
• Disk drive: 4 GB is needed for the
install. You will want a lot more free space on your C drive; at least 25% of
the disc free so you can run the program well.
• You’ll need a DVD Rom for installation of
course.
• Display: A graphic color display
compatible with the selected platform-specific graphic
adapter. The minimum recommended monitor
size is 17 inches.
• Graphics adapter: A graphics adapter with
a 3D OpenGL accelerator is required with
minimum resolution of 1024x768 for
Microsoft Windows workstations and 1280x1024 for
UNIX workstations.
CATIA V5 is organized into what are called workbenches. A workbench is a working environment with a
specific set of tools appropriate to the dominant task of that workbench.
- the sketcher workbench,
- the part design workbench,
- the wireframe and surface design workbench,
- the assembly design workbench, and
- the drafting workbench.
·
The Sketcher Workbench is where you do your drawings.
·
The Part Design Workbench is the parametric, feature-based environment
where you create solid models.
·
The Wireframe and Surface Design Workbench, like the part design
workbench, is also parametric and feature-based, but in this workbench you
create wire frame models or surface models, as opposed to solid body
models. A surface is like the “skin” of
a solid, but it has a zero thickness value.
The tools in this workbench are similar to those of the part design
workbench, but you have additional functionality for creating and manipulating
surfaces.
·
The Assembly Design Workbench is where you assemble the components
you’ve modeled, constraining them so they work together properly and
accurately. There’s two methods for creating assemblies, top-down and bottom
up.
·
The Drafting Workbench is where you document your work, for example, by
creating detailed drawing views that you’ll be sharing with your customer or
suppliers/vendors. When we talk about drafting later on, we’ll be learning
about the two methods of drafting, interactive and generative.
·
CATPart – this is the file extension for
the files you create in the Sketcher, Part Design, and Wireframe and Surface
Design workbenches.
·
CATProduct – this is the file extension
for a CATIA assembly.
·
CATDrawing – this is the file extension
for the files you make in the Drafting Workbench.
Feature-based Modeling
In 3d CAD design, you start with a sketch,
and then turn it into something 3D, either a solid or a surface—these are
features. A feature is defined as the
smallest building block that can be modified individually. Then you put your
features together into parts, and your parts together into assemblies. A model created in CATIA V5 is a combination
of a number of individual features andeach feature is related to the other
directly or indirectly.
This is a term that’s really easy to
understand, actually, but seems confusing at first. Basically, you create your
3D models using sketches that have parameters like size (length, width, area
etc) and relationships (parallel lines, equal sides etc). The relationships are called constraints
in CATIA. These parameters can be
changed anytime during the design, modeling and documenting process fairly
easily, so that you don’t have to start from the beginning if you want to make
a small change. This is the single most cool and time-saving functionality of
computer aided design, as distinguished from paper-based design, where you’d
have to rebuild the whole thing from scratch if you wanted to see how a small
change works.
This basically means that your work updates
across all CATIA environments; if you make a change in one workbench, you won’t
have to duplicate it elsewhere; CATIA does that for you. The bidirectional associativity ensures that
if any modification is made in the model in any
one of the workbenches of CATIA V5, it is
automatically reflected in the other workbenches
immediately.
Specification Tree
The specification tree appears on the left
of your screen, and keeps track of all your operations, in a nested format that
lets you see how you made a feature. Each sketch and feature, etc, has its own
branch or node in the tree, and if you expand a branch, you can see of what
that branch is comprised. The
specification tree that appears when you start a new file under the Part Design
workbench.
Compass
The CATIA compass is a tool that is used to
manipulate the orientation of parts, assemblies, or sketches. You can also orient the view of the parts and
assemblies. By default, it appears on
the top right corner of the geometry area.
All the 3D CAD programs have something like this; in AutoCAD it’s called
the UCS, or User Coordinate System; in Inventor, you have the View Cube also.
Constraints refer to the relationships
among your geometric entities, or drawing elements. In the sketcher workbench,
you use geometric constraints to define the size and position of your drawings,
and then you apply numerical dimensions to precisely define the size.
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