8/13/2019 How to Create a Simple Design Table in Catia _ Catia Central

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-to-create-a-simple-design-table-in-catia-catia-central 1/6

21.10.13 How To Create a Simple Design Table In Catia | Catia Central

catiacentral.com/catiav5tutorial/how-create-simple-design-table-catia 1/6

Home » Tutorials

How To Create a Simple Design Table In CatiaTutorial File(s):

 Attachment Size

 Punch Designed in Catia 113.2 KB

This tutorial will show you how to create a simple design table  linked to a CATPart in Catia. Design

tables are used to drive parameters in Catia from either a Microsoft Excel sheet or a text document.

Once that is achieved, we are then able to use Catia to catalogue the different configurations to be

used in a design, but we'll cover that in a later tutorial.

To put a design table into a Catia Catalogue, check out this tutorial, How To Catalogue a Design Table

in Catia. It uses the part we're going to create below and inserts it into a catalogue for re-use.

From my experience, Catia releases earlier that 18 have compatibility issues with Excel because of thefile structure changes from 2003 to 2007. If you're using Catia R18 or up, use Excel, but if you're

using an older release of Catia and Excel 2007, rather use text documents.

For this example we're going to make a catalogue of piercing punches and I'll try and keep it simple.

Before we begin just make sure that Parameters and Relations are enabled under Tools->Options-

>Part Infrastructure on the Display tab.

 

DESIGNING THE PART

Open Catia and create a new part by clicking on File->New or clicking on the New icon.

Remember to save your model.

I use parameters to link dimensions to design tables because they are much more user friendly

and easier to troubleshoot. So to do that, click on the Formula icon  which will bring up adialogue box where we can add our parameters.

Catia V5 Tutorial, tips, tricks and article directory for Catia V5 users

 

Catia Central

Home News Browse & Search Content Tutorials Request a Tutorial

Auspuff.comwww.auspuff.com/Gesamtsortiment

schnelle Lieferung, zuverlässiger Service, flexible Zahlungsarten.

Free Build Your Own

Cablewww.plastics1.com

Medical and high-end audio cables are

brought to life with this tool.

Finde uns auf Facebook

Catia Central

Gefällt mir 

7 Personen gefällt Catia Central.

Soziales Plug-in von Facebook

8/13/2019 How to Create a Simple Design Table in Catia _ Catia Central

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-to-create-a-simple-design-table-in-catia-catia-central 2/6

8/13/2019 How to Create a Simple Design Table in Catia _ Catia Central

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-to-create-a-simple-design-table-in-catia-catia-central 3/6

21.10.13 How To Create a Simple Design Table In Catia | Catia Central

catiacentral.com/catiav5tutorial/how-create-simple-design-table-catia 3/6

To link the dimensions to our parameters, double-click on the dimension out of the sketch, on

the box that appears right-click the value text box and click on "Edit formula"

In the formula editor under "Members of Parameters", click on "Renamed Parameters", which

should bring up the parameters we created earlier. For the 70mm dimension, double-click

"Height" out of the list which should put it into the formula text box. You are now basically telling 

Catia that this dimension is linked to the "Height" parameter, so whenever you change the value

of "Height", the sketch will change as well.

 

Double click on the 4mm dimension and do the same as above, but instead use "Pierce_Dia" as

the value and once it's in the formula line add "/2" so that it reads "Pierce_Dia /2. This tells Catia

that it should take the value of parameter

8/13/2019 How to Create a Simple Design Table in Catia _ Catia Central

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-to-create-a-simple-design-table-in-catia-catia-central 4/6

21.10.13 How To Create a Simple Design Table In Catia | Catia Central

catiacentral.com/catiav5tutorial/how-create-simple-design-table-catia 4/6

Double click on the 5mm dimension and do the same as the Pierce_Dia but instead linking the

Body_Dia parameter

Double click on the 6.5mm dimension because that wil have to be 3mm bigger than the diameter,

so we will make a formula for it. Type in the formula field " (Body_Dia/2) +1.5mm". This will

ensure that the head is always 3mm bigger than the body. Remember the "mm"!

Exit Sketcher and create a 360º Shaft with the newly made sketch and use the Z as the axis line.

 Add a 13mm F illet, remember to keep the upper edge or you'll get an error.

 

CREATING THE DESIGN TABLE

Now that our part is done and our Catia part is parametric to our parameters we want to create a

design table to document all the different dimensional configurations for this part in a spreadsheet

and link them so that the spreadsheet controls the parameters of the part, if that sounds complicated,

don't worry, it's not.

Click on the Design Table icon  and name your design table "Punches", select "...with current

parameter values", orientation vertical (this is the spreadsheet orientation, vertical being values

going down instead of across)

 After you click OK a windows pops up and you must now specify which parameters you'd like in

the design table. Choose "User parameters" out of the Filter drop down list, multi-select our 3

parameters (use CTRL or SHIFT) and click on the arrow showing right.

 

Click OK and tell Catia where to save the file. At the bottom you can specify which type of file

you'd like to save it as, we're using an Excel sheet for our part.

 

In the background Catia has now created an Excel sheet  in the directory that you specified and has

inserted our parameters in the first row in the sheet. In the next row Catia has inserted the values of 

our parameters. On Catia you will see our design table with 1 line of configuration data. We now have

to edit the Excel sheet to add our additional configurations.

8/13/2019 How to Create a Simple Design Table in Catia _ Catia Central

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-to-create-a-simple-design-table-in-catia-catia-central 5/6

21.10.13 How To Create a Simple Design Table In Catia | Catia Central

catiacentral.com/catiav5tutorial/how-create-simple-design-table-catia 5/6

Click on "Edit table..." and it will open your Excel document that contains our parameters and type

in the correct columns

Save and close Excel and Catia will automatically pick up that the file has changed and will change

it's design table accordingly. Once the table has changed, the 5 rows will be added and you can

click on any one to see the part change to those dimensions. Click on a row and the Apply if you

want to view more than 1. Also note that to avoid errors, don't enter values that won't work,  e.g

Pierce_Dia >= Body_Dia.

 

Catia's Design tables are a great way to draw up standard parts that have different dimensions, later

I'll show you how to insert these parts into a catalogue and to enter some cool knowledgeware

checks and rules, so save this somewhere and I'll have that ready for you soon!

catalogue design table part standard part tutorial

Workbench:

Part Design

Add new comment 

our name

E-mail

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage

8/13/2019 How to Create a Simple Design Table in Catia _ Catia Central

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/how-to-create-a-simple-design-table-in-catia-catia-central 6/6