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CATIA is the PLM/ CAD/CAM/CAE commercial software suite developed by Dassault Systemes and marketed world-wide by IBM. It is commonly referred to as a 3D PLM software. All stages of product development are supported, from conceptualization, through design (CAD) and manufacturing (CAM) until analysis (CAE). It provides an open development architecture through interfaces which can be used to customize or develop applications. The API's are supported in Fortran and C for V4 and Visual Basic and C++ for V5. These API's are called CAA2 (or CAA V5). The CAA2 are COM based interfaces. These interfaces provide a seamless integration for products developed on the CATIA suite of software.
Catia V4 is principally a NURBS surface and solid based package. Catia V5 is a parametric solid/surface feature based package.
CATIA is widely used throughout the engineering industry, especially in the automotive and aerospace sectors, where Catia V4, Catia V5 and NX (Unigraphics) are the three dominant systems. The next sector where Dassault Systemes has expanded is the Shipbuilding Domain. Starting in V5R8 ( version 5 , release 8) , Dassault has constantly delivered dedicated applications to serve the more than never demanding shipbuilding industry. With Customers as famous as NewportNews , BIW , Ingalls , Electric Boat or the german cruiseliner maker Meyer Werft and many others , Dassault is taking the same route to own this market. Interesting to notice that CATIA Structure Applications (SFD and SDD) are using a top-of-the-line new technology known as Functional Modeler to speed up design and update cycles.
Outside of those industries, famous American architect Frank Gehry used the software, through a company called C3 Smartmodel using primarily Catia V4, to design his award-winning curvilinear buildings. His technolgy arm, Gehry Technologies, has been developing software based on Catia V5 named Digital Project. Digital Project has been used to design buildings but none have actually been constructed using the new software.
CATIA is pronounced kah-TEA-ah.
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