Is it difficult to teach university students how to use CATIA?

Around me, most universities have recently shifted to use Solidworks as the mainstream design software. Maybe they were given a very big discount from Solidworks. Maybe they are happy to see that many detailed tutorials/exercises are included in the cd pack, which is good for self-learning.

Is Catia popular in Asia, especially in China? i'd know more than any stories that an university implemented Catia successfully in their curriculum. Thanks in advance.

Hello!

FYI on the same topic, my son is in a mech. eng. program at a major college in the wetern USA and they use Unigraphics. I asked him why and he was told that UG gives and supports the software for free to the University. Sounds like good marketing on UG's part to me.

I don't think it is difficult to teach CATIA. Dassault provides free software to colleges. And the documentation that comes with CATIA makes teaching it fairly easy in my opinion.
I teach through El Camino College in Torrance CA.

Books and detailed-step tutorials are not enough in our market for students to buy, especially in Chinese. However, we have lots of PRoE & solidworks books nearby.

We cannot afford spending a whole semester to teach students how to use CATiA. They need to learn more by themselves after class. They don't want to look through the online documentation page by page to learn CATIA, but they prefer doing some tutorials with detailed steps as a start. After several hours, they can draw a 3D model rather than just know some commands. They'll be happy and would spend time to learn more in their happy college lives.

At Brigham Young University all freshman are required to take a CAD class. In this class they have to learn the basics in CATIA V5, NX (Unigraphics), and Pro-E. There are also advanced CAD classes and CAD automation classes for those who want to take them.

Neil

Hi Neil,

Well, you are right.  The college I teach for does have to pay.

Sorry for that mistake.

I assume it is a reduced rate because they have 40 seats of CATIA with every license.  El Camino is part of the HEAT program.

They give me the license for free.

I am well aware of the cracked dlls that get passed around.  But that isn't what I am talking about.

Here is what I have -

# 5691ED2 ED2-Educational HEAT 2 , Expiration date: 2009-06-30
# 5691ED2 CCD-Catia CADAM Drafting , Expiration date: 2009-06-30
# 5691ED2 DXL-All-in-one MultiCAx C, Expiration date: 2009-06-30
# 5691ED2 LLC-CATIA User Cmp Acad L, Expiration date: 2009-06-30

Hi Neil,

Well, you are right.  The college I teach for does have to pay.

Sorry for that mistake.

I assume it is a reduced rate because they have 40 seats of CATIA with every license.  El Camino is part of the HEAT program.

They give me the license for free.

I am well aware of the cracked dlls that get passed around.  But that isn't what I am talking about.

Here is what I have -

# 5691ED2 ED2-Educational HEAT 2 , Expiration date: 2009-06-30
# 5691ED2 CCD-Catia CADAM Drafting , Expiration date: 2009-06-30
# 5691ED2 DXL-All-in-one MultiCAx C, Expiration date: 2009-06-30
# 5691ED2 LLC-CATIA User Cmp Acad L, Expiration date: 2009-06-30

We use CATIA V5 at my school as the primary CAD software, but we also have ProEngineer and Solid Works on all of the computers for CAD. Our primary FEA software is Nastran with FEmap as the pre and post processor. Our students go through a very basic CATIA class in their freshman year that doesn't get them very far but they do have the option for taking 3 additional CATIA classes.

Mostly student learn CATIA through student projects like SAE Formula, Baja, Aero and other student projects. We become very good at it, but we often don't know about many useful features because we don't recieve official training.