CATIA vs FreeCAD Comparison

On average 90% of people, lives are spent in houses, offices, or in a myriad of different homes. Due to this, our mental and physical health is also affected by this. A nicely-designed construction ought to provide both a safe area and sensory stimulation. So to build these architectures in real life it is important to build them in software and test it for certain features. FreeCAD and CATIA provide a variety of features for designing 3D architectures. So let’s compare these to find the best.

CATIA is an acronym for Computer Aided Three-Dimensional Interactive Application. The first release of CATIA came in 1977 with the aid of Dassault Systemes, who nonetheless preserve and expand the software. It turned into a start to develop for use in designing the Dassault Mirage fighter jet. Originally it was designed to support Unix operating systems but now it is available for Windows also.

Advantages of CATIA

• Stakeholders and designers can collectively work on product modeling and can share their product designs.
• It has a huge library of ready-made objects and materials.
• It offers Cross-Discipline Development functionality.
• It is fast and efficient for engineering designs.

Disadvantages of CATIA

• It is not easy to get tutorials on CATIA.
• It is more expensive as compared to other 3D modeling software.

FreeCAD is an open-source, multi-platform parametric 3D modeler built to create objects and items of the real world. The parametric modeling feature allows design adjustment by changing its parameters. It carries many components to adjust dimensions or extract layout info from 3-d fashions to create high high-quality manufacturing-prepared drawings. It supports Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. It reads and writes to many open document codecs together with STEP, IGES, STL, SVG, DXF, OBJ, IFC, DAE, and many others, making it viable to seamlessly integrate it into your workflow.

Advantages of FreeCAD

• It has a neatly organized dashboard and workbenches. 
• Capabilities can be expanded using macro script functionality.
• It is open source and hence tutorials are easily available.
• It can be used on different operating systems.

Disadvantages of FreeCAD

• Object rotation on principle axes is not possible.
• Performance slows down in the case of large files.

Following is a table of differences between CATIA and FreeCAD:

	CATIA	FreeCAD
Definition	It can be understood as computer software that is used for drafting, surfacing, 3D modeling, etc in different industries.	It can be understood as a CAD and BIM modeler which is used to build parametric models and 3D designs.
Developer(s)	It was developed by Dassault Systemes.	Jurgen Riegel, Werner Mayer and Yorik van Havre are developers of FreeCAD.
Type	It is Proprietary software.	It is freeware.
Compatibility	It is compatible with Windows only.	It is compatible with Linux, Mac, and Windows systems.
Official site	Its official site is www.3ds.com	Its official site is www.freecad.org
Written in	It is written using C and C#.	Its source code is written using C++ and Python.
Plugins	It has a small number of plugins.	It supports a large number of third-party plugins.
Cost	Its costs $11,200 for a lifetime purchase.	It does not have any cost and is available for free.

Conclusion/Summary

On comparing both the software it is clear that CATIA meets the needs of commercial enterprises better than FreeCAD while for non-professionals FreeCAD is the best choice to get their hands on 3d and architectural designing.