CATIA
CATIA (Computer Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application) is Dassault Systèmes' flagship MCAD platform, originally developed by Dassault Aviation in 1977 to design the Mirage fighter and commercialized through Dassault Systèmes from 1981. CATIA dominates aerospace and automotive design — Boeing's 777 was the first all-digital airliner designed in CATIA — and runs natively on the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform with tight ENOVIA integration. Its user base anchors the Dassault PLM franchise.
Why it matters
CATIA is the gravity well that makes ENOVIA and 3DEXPERIENCE inevitable at most aerospace and Tier-1 automotive accounts. Once a program team is modeling a wing or a body-in-white in CATIA, the cost of moving the surrounding PDM/BOM/change-management layer to a non-Dassault stack is structural, not just license-driven. CATIA is also why Dassault could survive the ENOVIA VPM V5 architecture failure — the CAD users were captive while the PLM substrate was being rebuilt on MatrixOne.
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Cite this definition
Finocchiaro, Michael. “CATIA.” DemystifyingPLM PLM Glossary, 2026, https://www.demystifyingplm.com/glossary/catia