I have used Catia, Pro/E (Creo), & SolidWorks extensively in my 40-plus years of using CAD systems, and even a Computervision system before that which carbon dates me to using 3D CAD in 1982!
I believe that once you become proficient in using any one of these systems, they are much of a muchness. If you are a creative thinker (as in a good engineer) you can usually find a work-around with the tools that you have at your disposal. One question is of course how quickly you can learn the different systems, so user interface is very important from that aspect. My biggest gripe today is that these systems are now adding features for features’ sake. This, in my mind, is to keep the marketing department happy, so they have something to spout forth to potential customers, and also to have an excuse to charge existing customers on-going maintenance fees. These all too frequent non backwardly compatible release cycles (which Pro/E introduced to the marketplace) just end up slowing you down due to Software instability etc. i.e. the old adage being, If it’s not broken it can’t have enough features yet! You of course get the privilege of paying for this inconvenience. Yes, I know I have become a cynic, but don't forget if you live long enough you probably will too!
Catia in the era when I used it, i.e. the 1980’s & 90’s was a really good 3D surface modeler, i.e. great for Aircraft skins or Automotive bodies etc. However, the versions I used was only faceted 3D Solids modeling with Boolean operations.
Catia’s latest version probably is no doubt one of the best at providing a fully featured CAD package now of course including exact Solids. This is given that it is the big brother of SolidWorks (both Dassault owned). SolidWorks (desktop version2024) isn’t too shabby and is still probably best in class / value for money, but I just wish they would slow their insane development strategy down a little. A once-a-year release cycle is just nuts, given where it is at as a very well-defined CAD product.
On the Boeing front I believe a big reason why they went to Catia from Computervision decades ago would have had something to do with the price per seat which was incredibly low. We (Fisher & Paykel) were told a cost lower than AutoCAD 2D per seat at the time. (This was due to the IBM Mainframe structure that they ran on in the 1980’s & 90’s.)
I have always looked forward to the day when Software release cycles slow down to every couple of years, or better still every 4 or 5 years like they used to. Technology step-change in most cases has been worth the plunge, parametric 3D Solids modeling for example, but these changes don’t happen every year!
Onshape, which is a Cloud-based 3D Solids Modeling CAD application, I believe is quite good for individual parts and small assemblies but when you start pushing it it doesn’t cut the mustard-basically; and it is back to the future with regard to mainframe computing and variable response times which invariably drive users nuts and significantly reduce productivity far worse than the actual slow response time of the Cloud-based computer network.
And alas it looks like that the push into cloud-based CAD applications for SolidWorks or should I say Dassault Systems may not be so great either. This is despite the inherent cloud-based computing performance issues. You can decide by referring to the following 3rd party summary / web link of this application below. Personally, I am not lining up for this one!
https://cadbooster.com/37-things-that-confuse-me-about-3dexperience/