Operation Library

Every menu.
Now spoken in English.

CATIA Smart understands the full vocabulary of CATIA V5 — Part Design, Generative Shape Design, sketcher, constraints, transforms, booleans, and surface operations. Browse the catalog. Each entry shows the operation and a sample prompt that triggers it.

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Sketcher · 20+ operations

The 2D foundation.

Lines, circles, arcs, ellipses, splines, conics, polygons — and the constraints that hold them together. Describe a sketch in words and CATIA Smart drops it on the plane you mean.

— PROFILES

Primitives

Point, Line (by coordinates or by snapping to existing points), Circle, Arc, Rectangle, Ellipse, Spline, Conic, Polygon, Axis.

"Draw a 60-mm circle on the XY plane, centered at origin."

— CONSTRAINTS

Constraints

Distance, Angle, Coincident, Parallel, Perpendicular, Tangent, Concentric, Horizontal, Vertical, Length, Radius, Symmetric.

"Make those two lines parallel and 25 mm apart."

— OPS

Sketch operations

Break curve, Trim, Offset, Project 3D edges into sketch, Auto-deduce relationships from positioned geometry.

"Project the top face's outer edge into this sketch."

— PLACEMENT

Custom 3D placement

Sketch on an arbitrary plane with explicit origin, H/V axes. Essential for non-standard reproduction work.

"Sketch on plane 33, origin at point 18, H-axis along line 19."

Part Design · 60+ operations

Solid features and dress-up.

Pads, pockets, shafts, grooves, multi-section solids — and the full dress-up suite: fillets, chamfers, drafts, shells, threads, patterns. Drilled holes in seven flavors. Booleans across bodies.

— SKETCH-BASED

Pad / Pocket / Shaft / Groove

With limits (Dimension, Up to face, Up to plane, Up to next/last), mirrored extent, start offset, custom direction. Multi-Pad and Multi-Pocket for per-region depths.

"Pad that sketch 15 mm both ways, then add a 10 mm pocket up to the next face."

— HOLES

Holes — every flavor

Simple, Counterbored, Countersunk, Tapped (M6/M8/M10 series), with direction control. Slot, Rib, Stiffener for advanced sketch-based features.

"Add a counterbored M8 hole 25 mm from the right edge — counterbore Ø14 × 3 mm deep."

— DRESS-UP

Fillet / Chamfer / Draft / Shell

Edge Fillet (constant), Variable Fillet (per-vertex radius), Face-Face Fillet, Tritangent Fillet, Chamfer (length/angle or two-length), Draft (constant or variable angle), Shell (multi-thickness face selection), Thread / Tap definitions.

"Round all top edges R5, and shell the part inside with 2 mm walls — leave the bottom face open."

— TRANSFORM

Mirror / Pattern / Translate

Rectangular, Circular, and User Patterns. Mirror across plane, Translate, Rotate, Symmetry, Scaling, Axis-to-Axis. Operates on bodies or feature subsets.

"Mirror this whole boss across the YZ plane."

— BOOLEAN

Boolean operations

Add, Remove, Intersect, Assemble, Trim — across bodies in a single Part. Handles tricky operand-order cases and face-selection traps automatically.

"Remove the cavity body from the main solid."

— PLACEMENT

Body management

Insert Body, Insert Geometrical Set (ordered or unordered), Rename, Hide/Show, Set Current. All the spec-tree organization moves.

"Make a new ordered geometrical set named 'Tooling' and start working in it."

Generative Shape Design · 100+ operations

Wireframe, surfaces, and volumes.

The full GSD vocabulary: reference geometry, curves, surfaces, volumes, transformations. Sweep variants (explicit / linear / circular / conical), every fillet flavor, healing and joining, extract and disassemble.

— WIREFRAME

Reference geometry

Points (by coordinates, on curve, at center, at extremum, between), Lines (point-point, point-direction, normal-to-surface, tangent, bisector, axis), Planes (offset, three-points, equation, tangent, mean), Circles (center-radius, three-points, bitangent, tritangent), Helix, Spiral, Axis System, Direction.

"Create a plane parallel to XY offset 25 mm upward, then a circle on it Ø40 mm centered on the origin."

— CURVES

Curve operations

Spline, Polyline, Intersection, Projection, Combine, Connect, Corner, Extract, Extrapolate, Invert, Parallel, Reflect-line, Split.

"Intersect those two surfaces and extract the intersection curve."

— SURFACES

Surface operations

Extrude, Revolve, Sphere, Cylinder, Sweep (explicit, linear, circular, conical), Multi-Sections (Loft), Blend, Fill, Offset, Rolling Offset, Mid-Surface. Plus Trim, Split, Join, Healing, Extract, Extrapolate, Simplify.

"Sweep that profile along the spine curve with a pulling direction normal to the floor."

— FILLETS

Surface fillets

Bitangent, Tritangent, Face-Face, Chordal — with full control over trim mode, ribbon relimitation, section type (circular or conic), and orientation flags.

"Bitangent fillet R3 between these two surfaces, trim the supports."

— VOLUMES

Volume features

Volume Extrude, Volume Sweep, Thick Surface, Draft, Volume Booleans (Add, Remove, Intersect, Assemble, Trim).

"Thicken this surface 2 mm outward and 0.5 mm inward."

— TRANSFORM

GSD transforms

Translate, Rotate, Symmetry, Scaling, Affinity, Axis-to-Axis — operating on any reference geometry or surface, with full reader/writer parity.

"Rotate the bracket around the Z axis by 15° about the origin."

Inspection · 130+ readers

Ask about anything in the tree.

CATIA Smart doesn't just build — it reads. Every feature in the spec tree can be queried for its parameters, references, and geometric state. Useful when you want to verify, audit, or modify in context.

— PROBE

Feature state

"What's the pocket depth?" "Which face is the draft neutral?" "What does this sketch project from?" CATIA Smart reads the full attribute set of any feature.

— BREP

BRep selection

Faces, edges, vertices — by index or by center coordinates. Stable across small geometry changes (CATIA's FeatureRSUR semantics, not coordinates).

— TREE

Tree walk

List all features in the part, filter by name or type, find by full path. Inspect the parameter set of any Knowledgeware-backed feature.

— LIFECYCLE

Document operations

Open, save, save-as, activate, capture viewport. Force-reload after replacing a part on disk. Multi-document workflows.

Working with CATIA Smart

A few habits that get you better results.

— TIP 01

Be a CAD engineer, not a poet.

Concrete dimensions, named directions ("along +X"), explicit references ("on the top face"). The more precise your intent, the cleaner the geometry.

— TIP 02

Refine incrementally.

One sketch, one pad, one fillet at a time gives you the most control. Big-bang prompts work — but small steps let you verify each move.

— TIP 03

Trust the reader.

If you're not sure what something is, ask. "What's the diameter of this hole?" "Which features depend on that pocket?" CATIA Smart sees the tree the way you do.

The full menu, by intent.

Apply for a free evaluation. We'll set it up tailored to the parts you actually design.

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