I have hands-on experience with both catia and Solidworks, although during my work in NAL, solidworks was the modeling package that i used on a regular basis while catia i played with just out of curiosity in my free time.
"Catia is vast. Solidworks is user friendly and puts user first" this is the first things that comes to my mind with my experience with both this softwares.
Best way to learn Catia and solidworks is not to begin with an intension of creating a gas turbine assembly or compressor assembly but to begin with something simple say create a glass. I began that way in both this software without any tutor. I did self learning and there are few lessons i would like to share.
1. Before beginning the software yourself, if possible see someone do something in the cad program. He/she might do something complicated. Learning that is not important, just observe what he is doing, soak in the big steps. like from where to start. How much you soak is not important either just seeing someone do something gets you started.
2. Begin with some small and easy thing. i began my solid modeling by drawing glass, dish, bricks, rod.
3. Don't use all the feature at once experiment and during initial tries don't bother about the steps.
4. Once you have dug and drawn something in your cad program, its time to move to the next stage. In this stage you get to the help section of the software. Follow the step by step tutorials provided. If you have done the first 3 steps this one step will enable you to learn more about the tool.
I have seen that jumping directly to this tutorials is not very quick way to grasp the software. If i do the first two stage this tutorials are easy yo follow and i learn and soak more. The previous two actions work like creating the soil soft and when i do the actual tutorial it seems fit in.
This rule can be applied to any software that you decide to learn and master and i have used this technique in learning so many softwares and it always works.
Related links you might like
CATIA CAD video tutorial!
What is catia?
Solidworks CAD video tutorials
Catia vs Solidworks
EDST launches catiaa and enovia training center
Where can i learn NASTRAN and CATIA
What is NASTRAN?
