Outstanding capabilities of V6 include searching by date, version, or release status.
#Catia v6 machining software
Nevertheless, he says it is more usable than Enovia LCA, the PDM software Bell uses with V5. Maestas says Bell designers complain about the number of clicks to accomplish anything in Enovia V6. “Otherwise you can duplicate the entire aircraft.” A physical mock-up of the new 16-seat twin-engine Bell 525. “Do not duplicate from the explorer window,” he intoned. Maestas says people have unwittingly duplicated entire sections of the aircraft and replaced them. Instances of assemblies locked by somebody else cannot be updated even though the designer has access to the part being changed.Ĭopying parts also causes trouble if designers don’t understand the intricacies of the V6 database. Only owners or database administrators can unlock parts. Designers must “own” parts they create and can lock them to prevent changes by others. Parts employed in assemblies can’t be deleted from the database. Because each part is a database object, it must have a unique name. Instead of saving a file, designers “propagate” changes to their designs.
The absence of files is another aspect that requires user training. Instead of employing the geometric constraints found in most other CAD systems (coincident, concentric, offset, etc.), V6 employs what Dassault Systèmes calls “engineering connections.” These relationships resemble the kinematics joints found in V5. The biggest procedural changes are in the ways assemblies are put together. It employs part-construction methods nearly identical to V5. Maestas says previous Catia V5 users find V6 easy to learn. As a result, most of Bell’s historical CAD data is in Catia V4 or Siemens NX version 5. Bell had intended to use Catia V5 and Enovia LCA for a new helicopter design a few years ago, but when the program was cancelled, so was the V5 rollout. He characterizes the 2011 release as immature, even though V6 was announced in 2008.
(Source: Bell Helicopter)īell is currently employing Catia V6 release 2011, which has been superseded by releases 20x. Its five-blade design is intended to provide a smoother ride. The 16-seat twin-engine Bell 525 is the first helicopter to employ fly-by-wire. Bell’s Jim Maestas said his company is using V6 to design its first all-new commercial helicopter in 20 years, the Bell 525 Relentless. Representatives of two US customers, Textron’s Bell Helicopter and Cessna subsidiaries, presented their experiences migrating to V6 from systems that employ a combination of V4 and V5 models. V6 hands-on classes and lectures were well attended, and customers seemed eager to learn about the new software.
H-I’s Ingalls division in Pascagoula, Mississippi announced plans to move from V5 to a combination of AutoCAD and ShipConstructor, an AutoCAD application.Īt this year’s COE, customers seemed more agreeable to considering V6 than they were in prior years. Such customers include Daimler Corporation, Chrysler Corporation, and Huntington-Ingalls’ Newport News Shipbuilding division. Other Dassault Systèmes customers have taken the more radical step of announcing plans to migrate to Siemens NX instead of dealing with the complex transformation of their data-management systems required by V6. Today Boeing people say their company still has no plans to move to V6. Speaking at the 2009 COE conference in Seattle, Kevin Fowler, vice president of systems integration and process tools for Boeing’s Commercial Airplane division, said his company needed to recoup its investment in migrating from Catia V4 to V5 before considering a move to V6. However, until recently, these customers have resisted entreaties to move to V6. Improved performance ought to interest typical Catia customers whose companies design and manufacture complex products such as aircraft, automobiles, industrial machines, military vehicles, ships, and trains. Droit expects MTBF to reach 200 hours by the end of 2012. Mean time between failure (MTBF) is between 120 and 150 hours, compared with 80 to 100 hours for Catia V5. Improved performance, especially when designing complex products with geographically distributed teams.According to Dassault Systèmes’ executive vice president, Etienne Droit, the principal advantages of V6 over Catia V5 and all other CAD systems are: