V4 to V5 Conversion Thoughts
by David Albert, Albert-Battaglin Consulting Group

The purpose of this article is to consider the implications of moving from CATIA V4 to V5 in light of the investments made by companies in developing customized automation routines and applications. Many companies have achieved high rates of productivity by automating CATIA V4 tasks using IUA or CATIA development tools (CAA). During migration from V4 to V5 it is unclear what to do with these developments. One goal when migrating to V5, is to insure that no productivity is lost, while another is to realize the full potential of V5 and potentially the Windows environment to achieve even greater levels of productivity. This article will establish the frame work for the major V4 to V5 conversion tasks and explore some of the considerations that need to be taken into account. This article is not intended as a comprehensive look at the problem but rather as an outline of initial ideas to stimulate the CATIA community into further coordinated action.

Conversion Issues and Automation Opportunities

The major tasks that need to be considered in converting from V4 to V5 are:

• Operating environment
• Converting V4 data to V5
• PLM/PDM conversion/integration
• Partner data exchange in the extended enterprise
• V5 training
• Developing new V5 design methodologies and processes
• Converting V4 applications to V5 or developing new ones

This article anticipates that a company converting from V4 to V5 will have expended some effort evaluating V5 over the past few years so that there will be at least a core group of people who are familiar with the capabilities of V5. These people will be instrumental in laying out the conversion program and addressing the issues raised in this article. Let us consider the first tasks briefly then focus most of our attention on the last task of how to deal with converting existing applications and creating new ones.

Operating Environment

The first question that needs to be answered in the V4 to V5 transition is what operating system environment to use. V5 is a native Windows application which also runs on UNIX. It offers V4 users the choice of UNIX or Windows environments as opposed to V4's UNIX-only approach. That means the decision about switching to Windows, or running a hybrid Windows/UNIX system or staying with UNIX must be made. The decision will be impacted by cost, corporate direction, personnel, CATIA performance and CATIA UNIX/Windows interoperability problems. One important consideration regarding automation is that although V5 runs under UNIX, Visual Basic does not. Visual Basic represents a very powerful and easy to use tool for automating CATIA V5. Once the decision is made, a transition plan has to be developed to evolve the current environment to the V5 environment.

Data

The topic of data interoperability between V4 and V5 has been much discussed at COE and elsewhere. The progress that has been achieved in subsequent releases for CATIA V5 is well documented. There is no doubt that 100 percent compatibility will never be achieved. IBM has documented V4 data that will not be transferred to V5. There will always be some company-specific data that for one reason or another will not migrate to V5 automatically.

This creates the opportunity for the development of custom automatic data conversion applications in V5. These routines could be used to automatically check the integrity of converted V4 data and custom applications could be generated to access the data in V4 that is not converted and transfer it to V5 for a specific customer usage. Organizations with substantial conversion requirements may also consider third party services.

PLM/PDM Conversion/Integration

The move from V4 to V5 requires changes in the way the current PDM/PLM system is being used. At a minimum, the PDM system will have to be upgraded to handle the CATIA V5 data. The implementation of CATIA V5 will raise the question of implementing ENOVIA V5 as the PLM system. ENOVIA V5's close integration with CATIA V5 will offer CATIA V5 users benefits that have to be traded off against the existing system's maturity, functionality and the cost of switching PLM systems. The PLM system used with V5 can play an important role in managing the higher levels of automation possible with V5. This becomes extremely important as process is captured and automated. Its distribution across the enterprise to the right people at the right time is critical as well as controlling the authoring and editing privileges.

Partner Data Exchange

The implications of moving from V4 to V5 extend beyond the traditional company boundaries. Prior to making the transition from V4 to V5, data exchange processes were established with partners in the supply chain based on V4. With the move to V5 these have to be redone. This includes all the interfaces to different systems in the supply chain if it is a heterogeneous CAD environment. Since V5 handles additional levels of sophistication, it is necessary to decide how much and what kind of V5 data will be shared.

Training

Training will have to be provided for all users switching to CATIA V5. Even though users will find V5's user interface simpler to use than V4's, V5 is a more sophisticated system that uses a somewhat different design paradigm. To obtain full productivity with V5, users will have to master V5's Knowledge-based functionality in which concepts such as rules, checks, constraints, formulas and parameters play an important role. V5's ability to capture knowledge and intent can be used as a significant competitive advantage, but users will need help to make the transition.

Automation Applications

Many companies made large investments in customizing V4 to solve their specific problems. Although the investment in such customizations can be large, the payback in increased productivity often easily justifies the investment. The types of applications addressed here are those that have been implemented using the CATIA V4 development environments intended for customizing CATIA V4. These include IUA, GII, CATGEO, and CAA. As the transition to V5 takes place, companies will want to maintain the productivity gains provided by the customized applications as well as leveraging new opportunities presented by V5's advanced technology. Because of the substantial differences between V4 and V5, it will be impossible to automatically convert V4 applications effectively to V5. Our goal in transitioning to V5 therefore is to find the most efficient, cost effective way to obtain maximum productivity.

Process

We feel that business goals are the best drivers for automation adaptation decisions. Whether time to market, development or manufacturing cost or quality is top consideration for a given process, it is important that this goal be in the forefront of the decision process. Only then can an appropriate process be developed which will yield the desired result. V5 and through it, closer integration to the MS-Windows environment, can offer new process options which were unthinkable or difficult/expensive to develop in the V4 UNIX world.

V5 Process

The new V5 process and design methodology will determine the relevance of automating or customizing CATIA V5 operations. One way to develop the new design process is to review the old design process in light of the new V5 capabilities. Identify the process changes that would benefit from using a new approach with V5. Evaluate the process changes' impact on the ability of the new process to meet the business goals. Implement those with the highest potential of achieving success with the new V5 process. Prove out the process in a pilot project and then systematically roll out the process to the rest of the company.

Process Training Tools

Higher levels of automation spanning ever larger parts of a product's lifecycle will require new types of process level training and control. Training must move well beyond "How to use V5" to "How our company builds part X in cooperation with Customer A and Vendor B." These new processes will more and more come to represent a company's intellectual property over that of simple product data. The processes are likely to involve more than just CATIA V5 and will therefore require application independent capture, training and reuse methodologies. Like all fast, highly automated processes, process control and coordination will play a larger role in keeping things moving smoothly than was required with the non-automated and/or ad-hoc processes in the past.

New Opportunities to Automate Process

V5, especially when running in a Windows environment, will provide additional opportunities for process automation than V4. Standard interfaces and the predominance of the Windows OS on both engineering and non-engineering desktops will give opportunities to integrate CATIA more tightly with company processes throughout a product's lifecycle. The V5 product's API and the widespread availability of API's for other Windows applications will make new levels of process automation possible, at lower costs than UNIX customization efforts. It is now possible to integrate information to and from applications like Excel, Word, Lotus, SolidWorks or the Web programmatically with CATIA product data.

V5's KnowledgeWare also offers new and sophisticated ways to automate processes over V4 approaches. It is likely that KnowledgeWare tools and methods will often completely replace V4 automation programs.

Based on new V5 processes three potential situations can arise when considering the migration of V4 automation routines:

1. No function required - the new process eliminates the need for customized capability and no transition is required. An example of this might be a multi-view creation function that is no longer needed because a 3d photorealistic image will now be used instead.
2. V5 has the function - V5 incorporates the customized functionality as a standard part of its operation. No conversion is required. This would be the case for customization done to V4 geometry functions to make them sensitive to the geometrical context in which they operated.
3. New app required - there will surely be situations where the applications are relevant and need to be transitioned to V5 and the new applications that can be generated based on the new functionality in V5.

V5 is different from V4 in at least two substantial ways that will impact the development of specialized applications. First, the "bad" news. V5 is a young and rapidly developing application. Functionality is changing and being added faster than in V4. This is "bad" in that custom applications can "break" or become outdated very quickly from release to release.

Now the good news. Working in a common operating environment under a binary compatible OS like Windows, a new development approach is now possible. To leverage this, we suggest a methodology for migrating these applications as follows: look at the set of applications to be implemented in V5; break up the applications into functional modules with the aim of finding those functions required in common by several applications; then implement the common functions with as much generality as possible. The idea is to cut down the development time and cost by doing as little one-off programming as possible. If common application interfaces and operations with V5 can be implemented, only the specific algorithms for the automation routine will need to be implemented. This should result in a considerable savings in the development area.

This approach leads us to ask if there is a set of common functions large enough that it would make sense to implement them in general for the CATIA community.

Examples of such functions include:

• Data conversions - to and from other applications in the company without data loss, re-entry, or error
• Process capture and reuse capabilities - automation of processes spanning multiple applications
• Application interfaces - connecting desktop applications via programs
• Common task automations or intelligent features - conversion or "construction macros/programs" to reusable intelligent features
• System clipboard utilities - to quickly and interactively exchange CATIA data with other desktop applications
• Secure transmission /signature capabilities - to insure the absolute integrity of product data
• Item filtering functions - to select data for manipulation, exchange or analysis based on user definable criteria

One way the CATIA community might work together to benefit from the creation of a set of common functions can be envisioned as a clearing house for common functions. As the need for a common function is identified, these could be sent to the clearing house for evaluation. Once the need for the function is validated, it could be prioritized and put on a schedule for implementation. Then, once the function has been implemented, it would be distributed, most likely over the web, to CATIA users who require it.

At this point, such a vision of a way to reduce costs of developing common V5 functions is only a mental construct that we have considered. We would be interested in reader feedback on the subject. Any thoughts on whether there is a common set of functions that would be useful and would benefit the CATIA community at large would be interesting as well as any further examples. These can be sent to djalbert@abcg.com or bhbattaglin@abcg.com. If there is enough interest, the subject could be pursued formally or informally at the next COE and/or ECF.