If you're in automotive industry and not have your own design tool; then Catia is your must to use design software. It is the most complex and capable design tool and perfect for surface modelling. Yes it is not much user friendly and hard to become an expert user; but these doesn't enough to drop Catia V5 from number one seat...

I'm working with Catia V5 for a long time. I've used other programs such as Solidworks as well; but Catia is the best by far due to it's features. Catia is the most complex tool for part design and assembly management. For instance creating complex large surfaces with Catia (which is a must for automotive industry) is really easy thing to do. Variety of manipulating tools (turn, pan, rotate, etc.) makes you to easily view or manage the designed part. There are several modules which you can add many features to your part when managing the design. There are several material libraries to use for your product. Product tree is detailed and let you to manage the design steps e.g. to make parametric design. Catia is very powerful and fast; but sure you do need a good hardware as well. Creating 2D drawing is a bit complicated; but can be managed easier when you got used to it.

Probably biggest drawback for Catia is that you really need to spend years to become an expert user (not designer). It's a bit complicated compared to some other design tools. Mouse function is a bit hard to control - for example you need multiple buttons to rotate. Also interface is a bit old fashioned. V5 had many upgrades so far; but I assume it's time for V6 now for a better outlook. 2D generation module is really poor; therefore we mostly use other tools to create 2D's. License fee can be an issue for personal or small company usages.

Concept of 3 dimensional modelling was introduced by CATIA which is amazing. Approach of designer becomes easy and putting thoughts on paper can easily model into 3D. Saved a lot cost of prototyping and time to market. History managed easily and reused. 2D to 3D and vice versa is easy.

Honestly i dont see any limitations of this software other than Cost which make sense for larger organization but smaller organization cant afford.

My overall experience with CATIA is not much good and the program needs a lot of improvements.

I like that CATIA is simple and doesn't need much expertise in order to master it. CATIA allows importing files in different extensions and works smoothly with them. Also, I like the shortcuts of CATIA which saves me a lot of time.

I don't like the limited features that CATIA offers as i can't deal with solid structures or metal structures. Also, CATIA is not for professional use because it doesn't have any support community and lacks collaborative tools.

Despite being an experience CAD user, I faced some difficulties while using CATIA initially, but then after discovering its features and capabilities, I understood why it is considered one of the best out there. I definitely recommend it for CAD applications.

CATIA is without a doubt one of the most reliable and powerful CAD software available. Its features are countless and give the user maximum flexibility when designing a part, assembly, or a whole plant. CATIA is not only CAD software, but also helps with manufacturing tasks and creating processes for a given job.

The only downside of using CATIA is its very old user-interface. It is strange that Dassault has worked so hard to improve UI on SolidWorks yet barely did on CATIA. Experienced user might not find this an issues, but for someone switching from SolidWorks to CATIA, I definitely had a hard time adjusting.

Overall experience has been good and currently trying different softwares to compare and choose the best

In colleges, we used catia for learning the design of 3d materials.We used different processes, parameters to get the results and it worked perfectly well.Now again, i am using it to go more deep diving towards the design and it really helped

Not much to go against it.Simple and effective tool.. Just a little slow and needs a fast process computer to worl on a effective note.