SUMMARY: Demonstration of CADing using CATIA V5; demonstration piece is the Buster Sword from video game Final Fantasy VII (Note: never played the game myself).

DESCRIPTION: During a lovely discussion with my wife and friends, we got into the discussion of what influenced us the most growing up. I grew up playing Star Wars role-playing games (e.g. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic [KOTOR] both I & II and I highly recommend them), reading many Star Wars books, watching Star Wars movies, etc. I also watched shows on the Science Channel - especially Mythbusters. 

The Star Wars books and games were excellent because they illustrated 2 main points. The first: despite what conventional wisdom says, there is no such thing as “Good” or “Evil” - there are actions that either help or harm others... or do neither. The second main point: a person’s/culture’s values change how they perceive an action. While having a vivid discussion with my wife on the subject, she shared her background with these types of game stories, with her very favorite coming from Final Fantasy VII and how some of those gray area decisions were made.

From that discussion, I wanted to make something for her that she would appreciate so I decided to make a famous item from that game called the “Buster Sword” - capable of destroying almost anything. At the same time, I learned that many industries used CATIA V5 as a means to CAD so I decided to marry those two goals and combine it into one - make a CADed version of the Buster Sword in order to learn CATIA.