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Autodesk

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Autodesk, Inc.
Company typePublic (Nasdaq: ADSK)
IndustryCAD/CAM Software [1]
FoundedMill Valley, California, USA (1982)
HeadquartersSan Rafael, California, USA
Key people
John Walker, Founder
Carol Bartz, Executive Chairman
Carl Bass, President and CEO
ProductsSee complete products listing.
RevenueIncrease $1.840 billion USD (FY 2007)
Increase $289.7 million USD (FY 2007)
Number of employees
5,169 (FY 2007)
Websitewww.autodesk.com

Autodesk, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADSK) is a software and services company for the manufacturing, infrastructure, building, media and entertainment, and wireless data services fields. Autodesk was founded by John Walker and twelve other co-founders in 1982. Over its history, it has had various locations in Marin County, California, USA. It is currently headquartered in San Rafael, California.

Organization

Autodesk is divided into four industry-specific business divisions: Manufacturing Solutions (MSD), the Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC), the Media and Entertainment Division (M&E), and Platform Solutions & Emerging Business (PSEB), which includes geospatial and plant solutions, content and search, and extended design as well as Autodesk Labs. Autodesk also has a services group, Autodesk Consulting, and the Location Based Services Division (LBS).

Portfolio

A screenshot of AutoCAD, Autodesk's flagship product.

The Platform Solutions and Emerging Business division develops and manages Autodesk's flagship product, AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT, Autodesk's Geospatial solutions, Plant solutions, Autodesk Impresion, Extended Design offerings such as Design Review, Content and Search solutions, Autodesk Labs, and worldwide engineering.

The Manufacturing Solutions Division develops and manages Autodesk Inventor Series, Autodesk Inventor Professional, AutoCAD Mechanical and Autodesk Vault.

The Architecture Engineering and Construction division develops and manages AutoCAD Architecture (Old name - Architectural Desktop), AutoCAD MEP (Old name - Building Systems), Revit Architecture (Old name - Revit Building), Revit Structure, Revit MEP (Old name - Revit Systems), and AutoCAD Civil 3D.

The principal product offerings from the Media and Entertainment Division are Maya, 3ds max, Discreet Inferno, Discreet Flame, Discreet Fire, Discreet Flint, Discreet Smoke, Toxik and Lustre. These Academy Award winning products are covered on a dedicated page for the Media and Entertainment Division.

Other products include Autosketch, Autodesk Subscription Program and Autodesk LocationLogic.

Discontinued Products

From time to time Autodesk discontinues some of the products in their portfolio. Some of Autodesk's "retired" products are listed here:

  • Volo View was a web-enabled review and markup tool from Autodesk for engineering data, including support for Autodesk’s DWG, DXF, and DWF formats. Volo View enabled design teams to communicate ideas and review designs without access to AutoCAD software. Autodesk discontinued sales of Volo View on May 1, 2005. The latest version of the software, Volo View 3, worked with the following file formats: AutoCAD 2004, DWG and DXF; Design Web Format (DWF 6); Autodesk Inventor 7 IPT, IAM, and IDW and raster files. The functionality of this product is largely replaced by Autodesk Design Review. Autodesk has also released a free product called DWG TrueView. This product enables users to view and plot AutoCAD DWG and DXF files, and to publish these same files to the DWF file format.
  • Cyberspace by Autodesk was an early real-time 3D environment capable of producing basic phong shaded walkthroughs of DXF format models in "realtime". No textures were supported, and the system was able to support a maximum DXF model size of around 35 KB [citation needed]. A popular demo model of the Parthenon in Greece was shown around the US in a tour of the portable demo system - complete with virtual reality goggles.

History

Autodesk's first notable product was AutoCAD, a CAD application designed to run on the systems known as "microcomputers" at the time, including those running the 8-bit CP/M operating system and two of the new 16-bit systems, the Victor 9000 and the IBM Personal Computer (PC). This CAD tool allowed users to create detailed technical drawings, and was affordable to many smaller design, engineering, and architecture companies.

Release 2.1 of AutoCAD, released in 1986, included AutoLisp, a built-in Lisp interpreter initially based on XLISP.[1] This opened the door for third party developers to extend AutoCAD's functionality, to address a wide range of vertical markets - strengthening AutoCAD's market penetration.

Subsequent to AutoCAD Release 12, the company stopped supporting the Unix environment and the Apple Macintosh platform. After AutoCAD Release 14, first shipped in 1997, Autodesk discontinued development under MS-DOS, and focused exclusively on Microsoft Windows.

AutoCAD has grown to become the most widely used CAD program for 2D non-specialized applications. The native file formats written by AutoCAD, DXF and DWG, are also widely used for CAD data interoperability.

In the early 1990s, Autodesk started to develop specialty versions of AutoCAD, targeted to broad industry segments, including architecture, civil engineering, and manufacturing. Since the late 1990s, the company has added a number of significant non-AutoCAD-based products, including Revit[2], a parametric building modeling application (acquired in 2002, from Massachusetts-based Revit Technologies for $133 million), and Inventor [3], an internally developed parametric mechanical design CAD application.

On January 10, 2006, Autodesk acquired Alias, with its automitive styling and digital content creation applications, for $197 million USD.

On August 6, 2007, Autodesk announced the acquisition of Skymatter Inc, developer of Mudbox.[2]

On August 28, 2007, Autodesk announced the acquisition of California-based PlassoTech, developers of CAE applications. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. [3]

Autodesk's products compete against products from several companies, including MicroStation from Bentley Systems, VectorWorks from Nemetschek, ArchiCAD from Graphisoft, SolidWorks, owned by Dassault Systemes, Solid Edge from Siemens UGS PLM Software, 12d Model, owned by 12d Solutions, Pro/E from PTC, and SDS/2 owned by Design Data.


References

  1. ^ http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/section2_115_4.html
  2. ^ "Autodesk Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Skymatter, Makers of Mudbox 3D Brush-based Modeling Software". Autodesk. 6 August 2007. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  3. ^ "Autodesk Acquires PlassoTech". Taume News. 28 August 2007. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

See also

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