The beginnings
Autodesk's core program is AutoCAD. It was developed at the beginning of the 1980s with just 16 employees. Version 1.0 came onto the market in 1982.
At that time AutoCAD was still in its infancy, but it consistently relied on DOS, which turned out to be a fortunate decision and paved the way to the mass market. At the time, however, this was anything but foreseeable.
A fateful version
Step by step, further functions were added, and it was only with version 13 that AutoCAD moved away from DOS. This version was a fateful one for AutoCAD and therefore for Autodesk. Too many major innovations were wanted all at once. The switch was made from DOS to Windows, ObjectARX was introduced and with it many new modules and requirements. This version was not completed on schedule. The decision was taken to ship it rather than cut features and rework it. This proved to be a grave mistake. The poor quality and the numerous crashes led to the loss of many users and companies, who switched to other CAD systems.
Back on track
Things were to be different for R14, internally called Sedona. The 120 developers in San Raffael were joined by almost as many testers in the second building complex. From the loss of revenue with AutoCAD and the known error rate, it was calculated that every crash bug cost the company $1 million. Several in-house test systems were introduced, and a bug database documented every embarrassment. At the same time, Daugh, the last co-founder of the company, retired.
R14 was a success, and with R15 version numbers were officially dropped and AutoCAD 2000 was released.
Product range
Today AutoCAD is no longer the flagship program, although it is the basis for a number of vertical products such as AutoCAD Architecture, AutoCAD Civil 3D and others.
Companies are regularly bought up to expand the product range, as was the case with Kinetix (3D Max), Visual Lisp, Revit and many others. But also to get rid of competitors and to position Autodesk's own products better in the market. One example is Kompass for version management, where the weaker Vault has now also made its way into Germany.
One of the last better acquisitions was Revit. Although sales picked up very slowly, it can compete with Allplan from Nemetschek in 3D modelling.
For AutoCAD LT there is a very good alternative, BricsCAD from Bricsys. But ZWCAD, MegaCAD and many other CAD systems also have their place in the CAD market and will hopefully keep it for a long time to come.
No clear direction
Where is it heading? At the moment nobody knows, and there is a lot of experimentation. No clear direction can be seen. Autodesk lets itself be driven too much by its shareholders. With its latest licence models it has alienated users and partners.
Our experience
The founder of Cadida Software GmbH was involved in the development of AutoCAD R14 and R15 in San Raffael and Alameda. The Chameleon test system, ISM (Raster Image), True Color and the renderer were within his area of responsibility, and he introduced OMT, the forerunner of UML, into the company. Today AutoCAD is one of many CAD systems for which Cadida develops. Find out for yourself what we do today.
kununu