Introduction
The 2025x release of the industrial design software 3DEXPERIENCE CATIA is here, and it is packed with groundbreaking features. For design and styling, these enhancements aim to elevate the design experience for creative designers, shape designers, and decision-makers. This release focuses on transitioning from product design to experience design, considering current design trends like sustainability and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide a unified design workflow that enhances innovation, efficiency, and collaboration throughout the design process.
Transforming 3D Sketching and VR Capabilities
The latest release introduces significant enhancements in 3D sketching and virtual reality (VR), making the design process more intuitive and immersive by exploring multiple variants.
- 3D Sketching Enhancements: Designers can now utilize the new subdivision curve creation, allowing for more efficient and natural 3D sketching. This feature enables automatic detection of the weight, to create sharp or smooth parts on a curve, preserving design intent as you draw.
- VR and Mixed Reality: The new VR capabilities enable users to leverage the Varjo XR3 and XR4 headsets for Mixed Reality scenarios, facilitating a seamless transition from traditional design to mixed reality environments, with collaborative opportunities. Designers can visualize their own hands and real-world elements within the virtual scene, enhancing immersion, accessibility and accuracy in scale. These new VR capabilities globally improve the immersive experience for better performance, visualization, exploration and review.
It is very efficient and powerful because it helps designers to keep their design intent while they are drawing.
Aude MASSONI, CATIA R&D Design
Enhancements in Human Design and Parametric Animation
Updates also bring new features to the Human Design and Animation Studio, enhancing how designers evaluate consumer experiences with virtual humans. VR capabilities are expanded to capture and replay moved objects during animations.
The Creative Design portfolio is also enhanced with new Design by Algorithm features in the CATIA Visual Scripting app. These include key improvements to reach new levels of design exploration with automated texture generation and parametric automation.
Streamlining Design with New Functionalities
Efficiency in design is a focal point of this release, with tools developed to streamline tasks and workflows.
- Mouse Menus: This new feature provides a context-sensitive menu that accelerates design tasks, allowing actions like move, change filters and mesh edition to be performed directly under the mouse.
- Enhancements Editing: Designers now have the possibility to make changes without switching between 3DEXPERIENCE applications, allowing precise, rapid adjustments and improving workflow efficiency.
- UI and UX upgrades: Streamlined updates were added to the interface of ICEM Design eXperience, the CATIA surface modeling app. These enhance accessibility to the different features and help CAS and class-A modelers work faster and have a smoother workflow in context.
Part Reconstruction and Curve Modeling
The release introduces an efficient workflow for semi-automated part reconstruction, particularly useful in reverse engineering. The curve modeling capabilities in CATIA have also been improved, offering more flexibility and precision for designers working with complex shapes and surfaces.
Advancing Visualization and Rendering Capabilities
The 3D visualization and rendering features have seen significant upgrades, enhancing both usability and visual output.
- Stellar Interactive Render Mode: This new mode offers an optimized and interactive global illumination capability, bridging the gap between real-time and maximum-quality rendering for physical accuracy.
- Rendering Updates: The 2025x release includes workflow improvements that enhance realistic image output through accurate material, lighting and human perception adjustments.
Stellar Interactive gives me an accurate distribution of shadows and how materials interact with each other.
Martin MÜLLER-LEPS, CATIA R&D Design
Enhanced Realism and Design Review
The new CATIA Validation Rendering application introduces precise rendering capabilities for visual validation, supporting design studies and compliance evaluations. It ensures physically accurate 3D visualization of light and materials, crucial for perceived quality, ergonomic and aesthetic assessments.
Advanced variants comparison and new capabilities like synchronization view were also incorporated into this release to more accurately and precisely assess design alternatives, and enable designers to make the right decision.
Conclusion
The 2025x release of the 3DEXPERIENCE CATIA Design Portfolio is a testament to the evolution of design technology and industrial design software, offering functionalities that not only enhance the creative process but also ensure precise and immersive product experiences. By integrating advanced sketching, Mixed Reality capabilities, and state-of-the-art rendering, this release sets a new standard for design excellence, enabling designers and design studios to seamlessly transition from concept to experience. As users explore these features, the possibilities for innovation in product design are bound to expand, paving the way for more interactive and engaging consumer experiences.
Do you want to see all the new updates and enhancements in this release? Register now to access the three replay sessions for Creative Design, Surface Refinement and V+R Product Experience.
