Welcome to the world of CATIA, Mike.
I know what you mean about learning something new. I took a ProE class a couple years ago and I thought ProE was a PITA. I had the same opinion when I switched from WordPerfect to Word, and when they took away my drawing board and replaced it with my first CAD system.
I'm sure that with some good training and practice, you'll learn that CATIA isn't all that bad and you might find something that CATIA does better than ProE.
I'll try to help with some of your questions:
Mid point of a line
CATIA has 'SmartPicks" and I think there is a midpoint option at least with Sketches. (I'm not sure about drawings.) You could also make a 3D points as a "middle point" and then project the 3D point into the drawing.
Multiple lines of text
This depends on how you do it. If you add the text as a Dimension property, I think it is limited to a single line. If you add an individual Text note, you can make it as many lines as you wish, and then add a Positional Link to anchor it to the dimension.
Sketches appearing with Solids
By default, CATIA hides a sketch when it is used to make a solid feature. But you can always Hide/Show to make the sketch appear again. You can also use Tools + Show to display all sketches.
If the sketch is part of a Geometric Set, make sure the Geometric Set is not hidden.
Datum geometry in large assemblies
I've been told that ProE has a feature called "skeleton" ? Many CATIA users have a similar method; make a single CATPart that contains the Datum points, axis, centerlines, etc. Add this to your assembly. You can also make links (external references) to this "skeleton" file, so everyone can use it to drive their part designs and all the parts can be easily manipulated by simple changes to the "skeleton."
hope this helps!
Last edited by MrCATIA : February 1st, 2008 at 08:09 AM.
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