CATIA Disciplines

CATIA is an integrated suite of CAD, CAE and CAM applications for digital product development and product lifecycle management (PLM). It is a product design software developed by Dassault Systemes, a French company that delivers 3D design. CATIA is high-end modelling and designing software that is considered as the world leader in CAD / CAM / CAE. CATIA supports multiple stages of product development, including conceptualization, design, engineering and manufacturing.

CATIA for various Disciplines

The products developed today are getting increasingly complex. Users are demanding better performance and quality from them. This compels manufacturers to come up with engaging technical solutions and that too at a rapid pace. The engineering solutions from CATIA answers that challenge, enabling the rapid development of high-quality mechanical products.

CATIA from Dassault is a diverse application that offers a complete engineering toolset for various disciplines within a single working environment. What is more, the workbenches (as CATIAs modules are called) provide a seamless and consistent user interface across multiple disciplines.

CATIA for Mechanical Engineering

CATIA 3D modeling tools provide mechanical engineers with valuable insights into key factors of quality and performance early in the product development phase. Digital prototyping, combined with digital analysis and simulation, allows product development teams to virtually create and analyze a mechanical product in its operating environment. CATIA’s mechanical design products allow the user to create parts in a highly productive and intuitive environment, to enrich existing mechanical part design with wireframe and basic surface features. CATIA also provides advanced drafting capabilities through the associative drawing generation from 3D part and assembly designs. Mechanical Design products can address 2D design and drawing production requirements with a stand-alone state-of-the-art 2D tool Interactive Drafting

Key Benefits

  • Create any type of 3D part, from rough 3D sketches to fully detailed industrial assemblies.
  • Unbreakable relational design - a new way to manage links between objects and related behaviors in configured assemblies.
  • Enables a smooth evolution from 2D- to 3D-based design methodologies.
  • Productive and consistent drawing update removes the need for additional user operations.
  • Process oriented tools capture the manufacturing process intent in the early stages of design.
  • A wide range of applications for tooling design, for generic tooling in addition to mold and die.
  • Advanced technologies for mechanical surfacing, based on a powerful specification-driven modeling approach

CATIA for Systems Engineering

CATIA helps system engineers master the cross-discipline systems development process. It provides an integrated systems engineering approach to developers that helps monitor the whole development process efficiently. For smooth development of a system engineering product, requirements engineering, systems architecture definition, detailed modeling and simulation of complex systems and the development of embedded software all need to be mastered in the context of the complete product. Systems engineering requires collaboration between engineers from various departments. As they are from different disciplines, the software that oversees the product development must be efficient enough to understand and overcome the communication lacunae. CATIA has the ability to get this done.

What is Systems Engineering?

Systems engineering is a trans-disciplinary and integrative approach to enable the successful realization, use, and retirement of engineered systems, using systems principles and concepts, and scientific, technological, and management methods.
Key Benefits

  • Leverage a best-in-class model-based system development platform to accelerate the development and validation of complex systems and products.
  • Ensure compliance with market requirements and regulations while improving time-to-market and reducing costs through world-class requirements engineering.
  • Collaborate across all disciplines to define a complete systems architecture through multiple operational, functional and component views.
  • Verify the behavior of complex products and systems, that span multiple engineering disciplines, through Modelica based modeling and simulation.
  • Integrate the embedded systems and 3D product design processes to leverage intelligent embedded systems in the 3DEXPERIENCE simulation of complex mechatronic products and systems.

CATIA for Construction


CATIA plays a major role in the construction sector and provides digital continuity for buildings and infrastructure. Construction engineers need to collaborate closely among multiple participants across all project phases. In addition, increasingly complex construction projects require joint team effort to facilitate collaboration and reduce rework between phases, using 3D as a common language. CATIA plays an important role in this collaboration as it allows architects and engineers to build beyond the limits of traditional project delivery methods by delivering a range of 3D modelling solutions that span all design and engineering phases. This allows for complete digital continuity for diverse project teams.

Key Benefits

  • Robust, industry-specific roles and applications to design and engineer buildings and infrastructure
  • Create high level of detail models fully compliant with industry standards (IFC)
  • Design for fabrication by developing models that conform to prefabrication or industrialized construction methods
  • Geolocate the model and manage the construction project in the context of the city or territory
  • Generate associative 2D documents from the 3D model
  • Extract complete Bill of Materials from the construction model
  • Collaborate with external partners and consultants by importing various file types to integrate into the master model
  • Capitalize on accumulated knowledge by reusing templates and best practices across all projects

CATIA for Design / Styling

From product to transportation industries, the style & design of the product plays a major role in its success on the market. Develop shape & material creativity, reach a high level of surface sophistication & quality, and get the right decision tools with physical & virtual prototypes. These are the key elements of CATIA Design/Styling to boost design innovation.

From 3D sketching, subdivision surface, Class-A modeling to 3D printing, reverse engineering, visualization and experience, CATIA Design/Styling provides all the solutions for design  creativity, surface excellence and product experience.

Key Benefits

  • Industrial Design: whether starting 3D ideation from scratch or from 2D sketches, industrial designers can manipulate shapes with unrivaled freedom and take advantage of a true creativity accelerator to explore more ideas in the early conceptual phase.
  • Advanced Surface Modeling: fully addresses the Automotive Class-A shape design process with a solution for surface refinement that integrates industry-leading Icem surfacing technologies. Delivers a powerful and intuitive suite of tools for modeling, analyzing and visualizing aesthetic and ergonomic shapes for the highest Class-A surface quality.
Since it is feature rich – regardless of the discipline you would like to work on – training on how to use CATIA is very important to derive maximum benefits from the software.