My company produces full vehicles and we are struggling to make SolidWorks work within this environment. I come from an aerospace background where Catia ruled all and was vary capable of managing models of an entire aircraft.

I don't get a warm feeling talking with SolidWorks support that this software can do what we are trying to make it do, and in some cases they have indicated that we are treading new waters and are "interested to see how you do it" .  We are designing and integrating brand new vehicles from the ground up and we are encountering problems every step of the way. We are working within EPDM which helps somewhat, but configuration management is a nightmare.

We have spent the better part of a year trying to figure out how to trick this software into doing what we need, and have already be burned by this in recent history.

Has anyone else managed to use SolidWorks on such a large scale? I have always believed Catia was the right product for this job, but I was not around when they made the decision to go with SolidWorks, and I can see the reluctance in spending 2-3x more for Catia.