Hello CATIA Users !

CATIA is a very important part of my life… After +35 years of experience with Catia (since Catia V2, V3, V4 and V5...) in different Companies and industries, it is still very exciting for me to discover the new commands, modules, etc. in 3DExperience. I hope that I never lose that pleasant and satisfying feeling....

I made many dedicated Catia Apps for my company, mainly in VBA and some with CAA. 

My goal as Catia Champion is to find the process and check the differences of these VBA Apps between running in CATIA V5 and in 3DExperience 2025x. 

Finally, to make a complete adaptation guide with tips & tricks. 

For this project, I chose one of a most big and complex applications that contains a large number of VBA & Catia features as well as external connections with Databases in Oracle, Excel, 3DVia, PDF and others. 

This App is call D2C (Design to Cost) whose objective is to analyze automatically all the operations from Parts & Products to show their costs analysis at an early design stage, so the designer will be able to look for more optimal alternatives, within the target costs.

D2C automatically knows the model type based on its technology (Sheet Metal, Machining, Casting, Plastics, Gaskets, Profiles, Tubing, Composites and Ceramics). 

It verifies each Part-Number in the company's Oracle DB, obtaining prices and previous purchase history, if it exists. 

It also automatically calculates and creates the welding of Parts & Assemblies based on specific algorithms, materials, clashing, types, etc., and surface treatments (painting, coating, sandblast, etc.).

I expected minor differences between V5 and 3DX, but I surprised that they were quite large, many differences between V5 and 3DX were generated due a concept change between File-base and Database-based.

Many VBA V5 processes were replace by 3DExperience services, and several features were cancel or modified.

This masterpiece VBA App takes advantage of the tremendous power of several CATIA modules and its great flexibility (in languages ​​and features) to program external automation applications.

I'll share a videos (in V5 and 3DX), a presentation of this project.