Cadalyst - June 2008 - (Page 27)

25yearssoftware vendors had to sell twice as many systems as before just to stay even. This change put tremendous pressure on the companies, and soon Applicon and Calma were acquired and Auto-trol and CV struggled to adapt. Meanwhile, Autodesk' s sales and earnings were growing rapidly, and by the end of 1987, the company had sold more than 150,000 copies of AutoCAD. In early 1988, Parametric Technology Corp. (PTC) began delivering Pro/ENGINEER, a feature-based 3D parametric modeler. This development changed the dynamics of the CAD industry, making it much more software focused. What' s more, computer and graphics hardware became more standardized. Vendors that focused more on software than hardware began to play a larger role in the industry. Among these were SDRC, UGS, and Dassault Systemes. AutoCAD v2.18, 9, 12, 14, and 2002 running at the same time, editing the very same NOZZLE.DWG file from AutoCAD v2.18. Samples dated April 5, 1985 by Don Strimbu. Today' s Powerhouse Autodesk' s transformation into a truly modern company probably started with the release of Walker' s ªI nformation Letter #14º in April 1991. In it, Walker, who had turned the role of president over to Al Green several years earlier, criticized the company' s management and called for renewed focus on AutoCAD. After a tumultuous 12 months, Carol Bartz from Sun Microsystems was hired as president and CEO. Over the next several years, she put a stop to several extraneous business activities in which Autodesk had become involved and refocused the company on AutoCAD. During the 14 years that she ran the company, Bartz turned Autodesk into a technology powerhouse. Some of this was done through acquisitions Ð including Softdesk, Discreet Logic, Alias, and Revit Ð and some was done through internal development, particularly for Inventor. Meanwhile, the overall industry became oriented toward software and services, PCs took over from minicomputers, and engineering workstations and managing design data became as important as creating them. During the past decade, we have seen the emergence of low-cost and midrange software packages such as Alibre, KeyCreator, and SolidWorks that compete directly with Autodesk' s products. As with most maturing industries, a great deal of consolidation also occurred. Today, just a few of Autodesk' s original competitors still are publicly traded companies. In 2006, Bartz handed the company' s reins over to Carl Bass, who has since seen Autodesk' s revenues skyrocket. With nearly $1 billion in the bank, it' s interesting to contemplate what Autodesk might do next. My expectation is that the company will begin to focus more on enterprise-level solutions that address the complex lifecycle issues faced by large multinational firms. It will be difficult for Autodesk to continue its rapid growth by selling AutoCAD one copy at a time. The company must develop a business model in which customers spend millions of dollars for the company' s products and services. David Weisberg, chief industry strategist at Cyon Research, has nearly 50 years of experience in graphics technology. He is the founder and publisher emeritus of Engineering Automation Report and recently finished a history of the CAD industry called The Engineering Design Revolution. It will be available by July 1, 2008 at www.cadhistory.net. 27 mately, the terms of this agreement resulted in disputes and lawsuits between Riddle and Autodesk. In March 1982, Autodesk demonstrated Riddle' s software, which was renamed An early version of AutoCAD running on an MicroCAD, at IBM system. Anyone who bought two or the Sixth Annual more seats automatically became a reseller. West Coast Com(Courtesy of John Benstead) puter Faire. The real launch of the software, which was then called AutoCAD, occurred later that year at COMDEX in Las Vegas. It was there that the software proved to be a hit. The basic version of AutoCAD sold for $1,000. A Real Winner It was near the end of 1983 when Autodesk realized it had a winner on its hands. Other software packages in development soon fell to the wayside. The company opened its first office in Mill Valley, California, and began hiring full-time employees. Within several years, Autodesk became a major force in the CAD industry. In addition to a vast difference in price, a number of factors distanced Autodesk from the traditional turnkey vendors. Perhaps most significant was the company' s decision to sell AutoCAD through a reseller channel rather a direct sales force. The company also encouraged third-party software developers by providing tools for writing add-on packages. The software was priced low enough that purchases did not require a high level of management approval. As the 1980s progressed, the turnkey vendors switched to using commercially available engineering workstations produced by companies that included Apollo and Sun Microsystems. The average seat price of these systems dropped to approximately $50,000, meaning that these June 2008 cadalyst www.cadalyst.com http://www.cadhistory.net http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - June 2008

Cadalyst - June 2008 Contents Editor's Window CAD Central Tech Trends: Community Building in Progress A Quarter Century of Cadalyst Tracking a CAD Giant The Highs and Lows of CAD Hardware Industry Insights — Looking Ahead Cadalyst Lab Reviews: HP xw4600 Workstation with LP3065 30” LCD Monitor NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700 — Graphics Card LaCie 324 — LCD Monitor CAD Manager: Making Standards Stick MCAD Modeling: Rational vs. Irrational Decisions AEC Insight: Data Collection in AEC CAD Cartoon Issue Indexes Hot Tip Harry: Just a Few CAD Renovations

Cadalyst - June 2008

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