CATIA vs DraftSight

• Easy modeling with production steps in mind.
• Surface modeling is pretty intuitive and makes possible to design complex geometries faster.
• Model edit is practical, making possible to edit a geometry parameter and rerun the program to have the new parameters ready.
• CATIA works very well for assemblies too, it makes possible to easily attach parts and bind specific parameters, also to hide parts that are not desirable for the analysis.

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• Simple and easy to use.
• Delivers solid drafting capability to the 'new' or 'veteran' CAD user, no [matter] what your demand level is; beginner, intermediate, or advanced.
• The thing I appreciate the most about DraftSight has to be its tremendous VALUE, when compared to pretty much every other CAD product out there, INCLUDING AUTOCAD. I'm Just Saying.

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• Updating an existing design can become really frustrating. You have to reassign all the radiuses, for example, even if they moved slightly.
• CAE function is not that good.
• Radiuses are slightly bad and can cause you lots of problems.

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• The layers palette icons are confusing and it requires too many steps to create a new layer. I shouldn't have to open the layer manager to create a layer.
• Converting splines to polylines and arcs (quickly and easily) that can be cut on CNC equipment. This is a nut no CAD package I've come across has been able to crack to my expectations. I need less "workarounds" and a more straightforward workflow with tunable options for this very frequent process.

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• If designing large assemblies or very complex ones, especially in the aerospace industry, CATIA is the way to go.
• The graphics are really good, and the software offers many possibilities to view a design: 2D, 3D, bird's eye view...
• Controls pan zoom rotate are easy.

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• It is hard to put an actual ROI on our use of DraftSight, when I came to this company 3 years ago we outsourced all of our CAD work even if it was just convert this ACAD drawing to PDF. DraftSight paid for itself the first time I performed such a conversion, especially since it was free back then. Even if we had the most expensive version, it still would have paid for itself in two such conversions.
• When I arrived at my current position 3 years ago drawings for reports were being hand done or sent out to a CAD subcontractor. The time and money saved on the first report we did In house made the purchase of DraftSight worth while.
• There has been no negative impact from the purchase and implementation of DraftSight only positive.
• Several of our clients have commented that we do "large firm work" for such a small firm and I believe DraftSight is part of the reason for their perception of us.

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