Profile Contouring MO does not perform well once the number of guides reaches around 50 or more. As the guide count increases, CATIA becomes noticeably slow and can begin to hang, even when users apply various tricks for creating drive geometry, guides, and check surfaces. This makes the operation difficult to use for complex or large profiles.

There is also no option to sort guides by shortest distance or by an optimized sequence. Managing guide order manually becomes impractical as the number of guides grows. Curve Machining MO shows relatively better guide sorting behavior, which indicates that improved logic already exists, but it still does not fully solve the problem and needs further refinement.

Another major limitation is the lack of a separate transition feedrate between guides. Users try to work around this using local feedrates, rapid feedrates, or post-processor logic. This is not limited to Profile Contouring. The transition feedrate limitation exists across all machining operations.

Tooling tabs introduce additional challenges. Currently, users must define check surfaces to represent tabs. However, the linking motion around tab check surfaces must be almost purely axial. Any non-axial linking motion causes CATIA to break the path and insert rapid axial moves, which are not practical in real machining.

To mitigate this, I created Knowledgeware packed UDFs to automatically define tab surfaces on selected guides for cutouts. While this works in CATIA, it is only a workaround. In Mastercam, tooling tabs are defined directly within the Profile Contouring MO, including tab thickness, tab width, and plunge behavior after crossing a tab. While it is possible to generate the entire NC geometry using a Knowledge Pattern, this capability is better suited as a native part of the Profile Contouring MO.

I am helping a colleague migrate from Mastercam to CATIA, and his feedback is that Mastercam handles these scenarios without issue. Profile Contouring operations with 900 or more guides compute in under five seconds. Guide sorting is automatic and produces an optimized toolpath with correct transition motions and no wasted moves. This capability has existed in Mastercam for decades.

Items that need to be addressed:

1. Performance and stability of Profile Contouring MO with a large number of guides
2. Automatic guide sorting based on shortest distance or optimized sequence
3. Native support for a separate transition feedrate between guides for all MOs.
4. Built-in tooling tab definition within Profile Contouring MO, including tab width, thickness, and plunge behavior. 
5. Robust linking motion around tabs without forcing axial rapid moves.
6. Overall scalability improvements to prevent hangs with large guide counts