# CATIA 5 Hacker News commenters recommended CATIA and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Recommended as the professional CAD tool for aircraft and race cars. The common caveat is its high license cost. ## Why people recommend it - Trusted where failure is not an option (2 comments): "why do we design our fighter jets, Formula 1 cars, or Space X rockets in Dassault's CATIA or Siemen's NX" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48178873)) "you aren't going to risk using anything other than the likes of NX, Catia, Creo, or SolidWorks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49692563)) - Used for fighter jets and F1 cars (1 comments): "why do we design our fighter jets, Formula 1 cars, or Space X rockets in Dassault's CATIA or Siemen's NX" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48178873)) - Standard alongside NX, Creo, SolidWorks (1 comments): "you aren't going to risk using anything other than the likes of NX, Catia, Creo, or SolidWorks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49692563)) ## What people warn about - High license cost (3 comments): "Unfortunately the P3 license costs like $15k per year, and it is f'in ugly clunky software." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49715863)) "CATIA with plugins can go up to 100k a year. That's what we currently pay" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48299014)) "These software are expensive for personal projects." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45869354)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [FreeCAD](https://hackerapproved.com/p/freecad.md): 199 recommend - [OpenSCAD](https://hackerapproved.com/p/openscad.md): 173 recommend - [Onshape](https://hackerapproved.com/p/onshape.md): 65 recommend - [Autodesk Fusion 360](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fusion-360.md): 60 recommend - [SolveSpace](https://hackerapproved.com/p/solvespace.md): 37 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.3ds.com/products/catia) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "CATIA", https://hackerapproved.com/p/catia/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).