What's the price of Catia, really?

As my boss back in the early days of CADalyst said, "Price is news."

Problem is that today most software vendors in our industry don't publish prices. For instance, how much does Catia cost? It has the rumoured reputation of being the most expensive CAD system on the planet.

Over on Dezignstuff, Rick McWilliams got us a price:

I got a quote on CATIA V6 from a VAR. It took them 3 weeks to do it. $34,700.00

Plus 18% maintenance per year ($6,246 in this case). He adds that it consists of many modules, and so the price ranges from $9,000 to $65,000 per seat, depending on the modules selected.

(The reason Mr McWilliams mentions "3 weeks," is because of Dassault's claim that you can order Catia V6 online and then be running it, all in 20 minutes.)

Source:
www.dezignstuff.com/blog/?p=7516#comments 

Comments

[Andy Reilly]

Hi, my name is Andy Reilly from the DS CATIA brand and I was part of the discussion about CATIA V6 and the comment from Rick McWilliams was made during our exchanges. It may be of more interest for your readers to look at the complete exchange because it covers much more than a single price for an undisclosed content.
I have no idea if CATIA is "the most expensive system on the planet" but given the range of CATIA V6 capability from mechanical, styling, knowledge, systems, electrical, composites, piping and tubing etc make a comparison of stacking all the product prices together and the saying we are the most expensive is a little misleading.

Kind Regards

Andy Reilly

[Jon Banquer]

Price is only one issue Dassault tries to completely ignore.

Catia’s CGM kernel allows multi-core processor support. This should give Catia a huge advantage over Siemens NX and PTC Creo and should be shown in direct comparisons using video. Where are the direct comparisons of Catia to NX and Creo when it comes to regenerating parts and assemblies?

Here is proof that the CGM kernel used by Catia and soon SolidWorks V6 offers what Parasolid, D-Cubed and PTC Granite One don’t appear to offer at all:

http://www.spatial.com/blog/leveraging-multi-core-hardware

Siemens Parasolid is thread safe but thread-safety is only a prerequisite to concurrency.

Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
http://cadcamtechnologyleaders.blogspot.com/

[Douglas Folk]

Both parties failed to include the cumbersome interfaces with Catia. This alone can cost up to 30-40% waste of time in-turn driving the cost, at the business level, considerately higher. [I am including the fact that you will need to buy a $399 spaceball to zoom, pan, and minipulate your model on screen.] Maybe they can utilize multicore but if you can't easily translate your ideas to a Consumer product you will be lagging behind in productivity. I have used Pro/E since 1991 and I thought their interface was poor. Looking back the Wildfire Revision was an awsome step forward. Catia is like what Pro/E was prior to the Sketcher Revamp v12?.

[carl]

Catia change their core product when they moved from V4 to V5 completely destroying anyone that used the products history. The company I worked for at the time stated after this massive headache that they will never recover from "they wished they had moved to Pro/E". Another interesting factor.. we investigated moving the 80% of the business from Catia to Pro/E and then compared this to moving 20% of the Pro/E business to Catia. Apples to Apples in software was almost Identical in cost. Think about that... O the STEP translators for Dassault Catia was $5000.00 per user. And we could not share licenses globally.

[War]

I think the critics for catia are abit misleading. I have used catia for 4 years now and still using it with out any problem. I have used pro-e, NX and working around inventor. I feel Catia lets me be more creative and the model is rugged. No concern for performance issues.

The user interface is almost like anyother, sometimes I feel its better than others. Also the scripting feature lets me customize alot of daily work so that they are just one click away.

[Kevin De Smet]

CATIA has a great name recognition, and sure it works, but it's not particularly impressive nor better enough than mid range systems to warrant the premium price.

And for most of its more advanced modules, usually companies use other tools anyway. Vistagy instead of Dassault's Composites, ICEM Surf instead of Icem Shape Design and it just goes on and on like that

[Metaldrgn]

Catia is well worth the money. They have such a huge range of features in one package.

[Spencer Hughes]

The outrageous price and the fact that the "Value Added Reseller" is coined into that price is aggravating. Not that the competition is any better for the money. I have used Catia and Pro/E and I don't believe that either has made any substantial improvements that are worth the price. What I have found is that because of their pricing it has crippled the small to medium manufacturing industries in most of the western world. That is, unless you are a multi-million dollar company who can afford the cost of the software you cannot compete.

[John T. Keliiaa]

we are a new OEM and are currently using Solidworks 2015 Professional - has does Solidworks compare to Catia? - we would like to get into vehicle design - our budget can afford higher priced CAD software - does Catia relate better to manufacturing? - basically is it worth the money and training investment? - thanks for the help ...

[Ralph Grabowski]

Catia is a whole different ball wax compared to Solidworks -- at least 2x as expensive, and in its current V6 iteration, barely able to exchange files with other CAD systems (because objects are not stored in a normal drawing file, but in an Envia database as records).

OTOH, if you need to provide Catia models to a customer, then it is the way to do. If you don't, then stay away from it!

[Chiggy]

I don't know what all the fuss is about. You can get Microsoft Paint for free.

[kk]

is there a Catia student version ..... (may be dreaming)

[Olof]

There is a student version, it will cost you around 120 euro (1080 SEK for me in Sweden so I assume the price should be around 120 euro). It seems that they let you download Catia V5 for free during august, they have for the last couple of years. All you have to do is register an account and scan your student ID card to validate that you are a student.
I havn't downloaded the program myself yet because I'm waiting for that free summer-offer.

[Mannon Wallace, Jr.]

This comment:
"...the fact that you will need to buy a $399 spaceball to zoom, pan, and minipulate your model on screen."
is patently untrue.

I've been using CATIA V5/V6 since 2001 and have never used a Spaceball. It is possible to do all panning, zooming, and rotating with the mouse.

Making a comment about so basic a function such as that makes me question the validity of the rest of the post.

[LAURO MARTINS]

This is all because you do not need to buy a license in Brazil. And everything is very, very expensive ...

[13devan]

anyone got a link to that original exchange, it seems to have been deleted

[daniel raymond selbe]

catia mouse"ing" all of your zoom and rotations does work. 4 years so far? See how you hold up with all that effort through your right hand tendons, and talk to me in a decade or two about all your carpel tunnel surgeries.
Really, look ahead.

[Fabrizio123]

V5 is excellent but when they went over to the cloud with Version 6 it became a major pain in terms of moving files out of the Catia system as some have noted here.

I don't think there is any other software that does NURBS designing like Natural Sketch does.

I really wish I could buy Catia for just BREP modeling, Assembly management and NURBS with a later option for ICEM Surf. I could afford to blow up to $1500 for just the first three.

Alas.

[Steven Wilson]

I have used Catia for over seven years and taught new users for three at Electric Boat. A superior platform without a doubt but non corporate users need apply. When I retired, I decided to start a design/software consulting firm. When three banks turned me down because of the cost of the software the plan was shelved. Are their any former v5 users willing to sell their old version now that they are moving on to v6?

[Julio E. Centeno]

Hi!
I see CATIA is based (or so) in "the cloud"...
NOT INTERESTED to be under Big Brother´s control, thank you.

Read Aldous Huxley´s "Brave New World" and "Island", then George Orwell´s "1984" and cry, my friends, cry A LOT.

Yours sincerely
Julio E. Centeno
Architect U.B.A.
Vicente López
Argentina

[Brian Kelly]

used catia, 25 years, NX 8 years, creo 1 year. Creo was basically hack and wack design, did not care for it at all.
no Boolean, the tree is a nightmare. NX was just as good as Catia in my book...all depends on what modules you have.
Why I liked them both is you can design in assembly, with all the parts in. Could not do that with creo, had to always open the part in separate window to work on the individual parts.
if you do a lot of surface, catia for me works the best...