is Auto Studio sill known in the industry as Alias, considering that Alias have been bought out by Autodesk (who also bought out Discreet (3dsm))

In my opinion, Alias is the best. It offers integration of a sketch to a model, and is a great tool for creative process. Besides it offers an amazing set of tools for creating evaluation and rendering. So becomes a complete solution for the creative process in product design.
3DS max may be compared to Maya, just the same way Rhino can be compared to Alias. 3DS and Maya are oriented towards animation & rendering. They stand poles apart with Maya being used for high end work like movie production.
Rhino in the same way could be termed a smaller surfacing software compared to Alias Studio.

Catia V5 is a good surfacing software, but it is extremely difficult to think using catia. It is far less flexible. Only thing good about catia is the blends function, extremely powerful tool. Catia is a great tool to convert your alias work to manufacturable solid models, but not for creative process. It is essentially an engineering software. Besides it comes in bits and pieces, for any small activity it takes a license. for example exporting STP files needs a separate license. Toolsets are also bucketed into different licenses, so it is essential to toggle from license to license a number of times when you are using Catia.
Alias is also very easy to learn and use. The set of marking menus and the whole interface reduces 'software load' & lets the user focus on the intent (Great heuristics). It is also supported with a very good set of learning documentation.

Hi you may like to check here.

http://forums.cardesignnews.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/...817/m/7731048381/p/2