Extract text from CATIA material catalogs (CATMATERIAL)
To convert CATMATERIAL material catalogs to another format, you need CATIA V5 or other Cad software.
To convert other file formats to the "Material Catalog File" file type, you need software like CATIA V5 or a similar tool.
A .CATMATERIAL file is a proprietary material catalog used by CATIA V5, a high-end CAD software suite developed by Dassault Systèmes. These files store complex engineering data, including physical, thermal, and mechanical properties (like density, Poisson's ratio, and yield strength) alongside visual rendering textures.
Users typically open these files using CATIA, which requires an expensive enterprise license. This creates a massive barrier for freelance engineers, manufacturers, or downstream users who need to view or extract material specifications. The format is strictly proprietary, closed-source, and completely unsupported by web browsers or standard data analysis tools.
When sharing files across different CAD environments like SolidWorks or AutoCAD, users frequently want to convert .CATMATERIAL data to open formats like XML, TXT, or standard MTL material libraries. However, extracting this data without the host software is highly problematic. You will almost certainly lose the mechanical solver parameters during any non-native conversion, retaining only basic visual maps.
Because .CATMATERIAL is a closed binary format, it is exceptionally difficult to open or convert outside of the Dassault ecosystem. Standard online converters fail because they lack access to the proprietary CATIA rendering engine. Often, only the original software can properly read or export the data. However, convert.guru provides a pragmatic workaround. Drag and drop your file to see what it is and convert it if supported. Even if full conversion fails, our tool can inspect the internal file structure to extract human-readable text strings, helping you recover embedded material names or basic unencrypted property values.
Convert.Guru analyzes your CATMATERIAL file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted MODEL, CATPART and CGR files.
If you want to convert CATMATERIAL file to , you can use CATIA V5 or similar software from the "Material Properties Catalog" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert files to CATMATERIAL, try CATIA V5 or another comparable tool in the "Material Properties Catalog" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our CATMATERIAL converter.