ZOnPlm.com

Ever since I started CAA V5 programming, I have found out that it is very difficult to get help on CAA programming questions, you have to google a lot to find something related to your problem. Things shouldn't be that hard...

Now I am launching a website totally dedicated to CATIA/VPLM administration and programming issues targeted towards 3DPLM developers, administrators and architects alike.

Hope this site will contribute a little to the 3DPLM administration and programming community.

V5 to V6 migration and V6 customization

Suresh Attuluri at Dassault Systemes and Brian Baker at IBM kindly replied my questions posted on Linkedin group PLM Groups and CAA V5/V6 interFace Forum regarding tools availabe from DS to help customers migrate from V5 to V6.

here is the summary of their replies:

1. CATIA customization will still be done using CAA
2. CATIA automation can be done either using existing IDE such as VS or with V6 tools
3. V6 PLM customization/collaboration, which is basically MatrixOne based to my understanding, will be devloped on the new V6 tools as described in my previous blog.
4. "On migration, DS has developed multiple different tools to maintain co-existence and migration with SmarTeam, ENOVIA VPM V4, ENOVIA LCA V5, and Filebase for both V4 and V5 CATIA. The capabilities of each are varied, and all will be greatly enhanced in 2009x release (this December) and 2010 (1Q 2009). " ( from Brian Baker's email to me)
5. please feel free to provide your comments on this.

Development Tools for V6

Mr. Franck MONTIGON at ENOVIA Marketing send me the following email regarding my enquiry about delevopment tools for V6 Platforms.


here is his email in its entirety:

"There is no ‘CAA V6’ per say – it is now part of the ENOVIA portfolio within the ENOVIA Studio products as you can see below.

I will try to find more info on the RDV / RDR configurations for you.
My guess is that yes it will be different but w/ even greater possibilities! "

Basically

the "RDV ENOVIA Studio Developer Edition" product replaces the following CAA V5 RADE product

• CDV CAA - C++ BASE DEVELOPMENT Configuration
• CUT CAA - C++ Unit Test Manager Product

the "RDR ENOVIA Studio Architect Edition" product replaces the following CAA V5 RADE product

• CDC CAA - C++ EXTENDED DEVELOPMENT Configuration

the "VLC ENOVIA Live Collaboration" product replaces the following CAA V5 RADE product

• DMC CAA - Data Model Customizer
  
  

CAA V5 Help on the Internet

I believe it is every CAA V5 (or V6 for that matter) programmer's experience that it is very difficult to get their specific CAA V5 questions answered. To help ease the pain (believe I was there), I have compiled a list of websites that offer some of the helps we need.

Please be aware that the following sites are specifically for CAA V5/V6 programmers. there are a lot of resources on the internet that help CATIA end users, which are NOT listed here.

1. 3ds C++/Java forum: http://www.3ds.com/alliances/c-java-developers/, you need a valid RADE license in order to register. user inerface is very hard to use, but there might be some DS developers there to answer your questions. ( my impression only, not verified with DS) . This is the only site that dedicates to CAA V5/RADE.
2. COE discussion board: http://www.coe.org/Collaboration/DiscussionForum/ActiveDiscussions/tabid/210/Default.aspx, some programming discussion, but not a lot.
3. CATIA V5 forum, a website established in Germany, CAA V5 programming is part of the forums: http://www.catiav5forum.de/wbb3/wbb/index.php?page=Board&boardID=102&s=522d36c6a68e95754ec086a019f7634e5b1db806
4. Linkedin CAA V5/V6 interFace Forum: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=142356&trk=anet_ug_grppro, just started. Not many solutions posted there. but you can connect to many other CAA V5/V6 developers.
5. China's largest CAA V5 forum site: http://www.cadcaecam.com/forum/forum-42-1.html. of course you need to understand Chinese in order to take advantage of it.
6. QueryCat, more general discussions, no specific programming tips: http://www.querycat.com/
7. ......

Please post your favorite website/blog here so that this list will become more complete!

More Info about V6 Changes

The following comment is made by Yuriy Dudko
Software Developer at VISTAGY, Inc. on linkedin CAA V5 interFace Forum discussion room:

(the bullets are added by me to make the points easier to read)

"From what I heard at DevCon'08 the most changed part of CAA APIs is related to working with CATDocument pointers.

1. Essentially CATDocument is gone in V6 and you have to replace it with so-called PLM triptych. That a large topic in itself, so I will not go into details here.
2. Then Product Structure APIs have been replaced completely with new APIs dealing with those PLM triptychs or PLM components (which I think is another name for PLM triptych).
3. CGM classes have been completely replaced with new GM classes (DS created tool for migrating CGM classes to GM classes).
4. Visualization framework has been split in many new frameworks.
5. There are some other minor changes, I beleive.

I think this should give you some idea about an impact on CAA V5 programmers. For more detail you will have to wait for V6 release. It should have complete migration documentation from what I glimpsed at DevCon. Hope this helps. "