CATIA V5 Tutorial: How to Clean and Optimize CATIA Files with CATDUA Tool

CATIA V5 accumulates a lot of junk like code errors etc. in it’s files during modeling, modification etc. Due to this, CATIA files may become corrupt and also  during this process, the files become larger in size. To get rid of these problems, CATIA V5 offers CATDUA function. CATDUA is expanded as “Catia Data Upward Assistant”.

CATDUAV5 can be run on a single CATIA file or in Batch mode. CATDUA allows you to make a diagnostic and heal a CATIA document. The documents supported by CATDUA utility are CATPart, CATProduct, CATProcess, CATAnalysis, CATDrawing, and CATMaterial.

How to Run CATDUA Tool for a particular CATIA File from Desk

1. Open the CATIA file for which you want to run CATDUAV5.
2. Click File –> an then choose “Desk…”
3. In the Desk window, you can see all the Parts opened in that CATIA session. Look for the file for which you want to run CATDUA. Right Click on the file and select ”CATDUAV5…”

4. The CATIA V5 Data Upward Assistant dialog box appears. CATDUA V5 offers two options viz. Check and Clean. ‘Check’ option will only check the CATIA file for errors and will give a report. It won’t fix the errors. ‘Clean’ option will check for errors and also fixes them.

In our scenario, we have selected ‘Clean’ option. You can check “Open html output file” box if you would like CATIA to open the html report of the process. The report gives details of errors, it’s various levels etc. Now Click “Run” button.

After the process is complete, CATDUA V5 gives information about errors and status of the file.

The CATIA file now becomes cleaner and less prone to corruption. The other main advantage of running CATDUA is decrease in the size of file. Hence your CATIA files when processed with CATDUA, will open much faster.

For example see the difference in size of CATPart before and after running CATDUA utility. A CATPart of around 25MB was reduced to 21MB after the CATPart is cleaned with CATDUA V5. For parts with large size, this difference may be higher.

How to Run CATDUA V5 Tool in BATCH mode?

CATIA offers Batch mode for cleaning multiple CATIA files automatically. This is very useful when you have lots of files and want to clean them in a single shot.
1. Open Batch Monitor of CATIA V5. (From Tools—> Utilities…) and double click on CATDUAV5 in the list of utilities.

2. CATDUAV5 Batch mode opens up. Select “Check” or “Clean” from the drop down list as per your need.

3. Select the level of checking or cleaning. ‘All levels’ is preferred most of the time.
4. In the “Input Options” area, click on “All” button and browse through the folder which has all the CATParts or CATIA files which needs cleaning. For example, we have created a folder “Input CATParts” in which we have stored all the CATParts. This needs to be cleaned using CATDUA.

5. Specify Output folder in which CATDUA processed CATIA files will be saved. You have the choice to overwrite the input files with the cleaned files too. In our illustration, we have created a separate folder “CATDUA Cleaned”. It is this folder where all the CATDUA cleaned files will be saved.

6. After specifying all the above options, Click on “Run” Button.

7. You are done. Now CATDUAV5 will clean all the files! The files will get rid of errors and also will load more faster.