Hi All,

Does anyone have any tips for helping the transition between using Catia and Solidworks?

I have been using Solidworks for a few months now, and still don't feel like I am working with anything like the efficiency I was able to in Catia. I can't quite put my finger on where I am struggling, but I have a general sense of a lack of flexibility with how Solidworks lets you work. The most common problem I encounter seems to be a lack of robustness in sketching, where geometry that was previously happy becomes overconstrained for no apparent reason - sometimes just selecting a dimension can cause this (not even changing the value!)

Some of my other frustrations come from things like the order that things require to be selected in order to carry out a particular function, where Catia seemed much happier for you to select X then Y, or Y then X but Solidworks only allows the one order. I'm sure this will reduce in time as I become more attuned to how it works.

I have a general feeling that SW has much more of a tendancy to dictate to you the way that things need to be done, rather than giving you flexible tools and letting the designer decide. Has anyone else gone through this software change? How did you guys deal with it?

(I'm not sure if this is the most appropriate forum for this discussion, so feel free to move it if there is a better place.)