Autodesk
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Autodesk, Inc. | |
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| Type | Public (NASDAQ: ADSK) |
| Founded | Mill Valley, California, USA (1982) |
| Headquarters | San Rafael, California, USA |
| Key people | John Walker, Founder Carol Bartz, Executive Chairman Carl Bass, President and CEO |
| Industry | CAD/CAM Software [1] |
| Products | See complete products listing. |
| Revenue | ▲ $1.840 billion USD (FY 2007) |
| Net income | ▲ $289.7 million USD (FY 2007) |
| Employees | 5,169 (FY 2007) |
| Website | www.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.
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[edit] 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).
[edit] Products
The Platform Solutions and Emerging Business division develops and manages Autodesk's flagship product, AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT, Autodesk's Geospatial solutions (AutoCAD Map3D,AutoCAD MapGuide Enterprise, etc) Plant solutions, Autodesk Impression, 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.
[edit] 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.
- Autodesk Animator Pro (DOS) and Autodesk Animator Studio (Windows) were products designed for cell based animation produced between the early to mid 1990s. At the time Autodesk was also advertising an Autodesk Media product similar in description to Macromedia's Director but this product was never released to the public.
- 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.
[edit] 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.[citation needed] The native file formats written by AutoCAD, DXF and DWG, are also widely used for CAD data interoperability.
In the early 1990s, with the purchase of Softdesk in 1996, 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, a parametric building modeling application (acquired in 2002, from Massachusetts-based Revit Technologies for $133 million), and Inventor, an internally developed parametric mechanical design CAD application.
On January 10, 2006, Autodesk acquired Alias, with its automotive styling and digital content creation applications, for $197 million USD.[2]
On August 6, 2007, Autodesk announced the acquisition of Skymatter Inc, developer of Mudbox.[3]
On August 20, 2007, Autodesk announced that it has completed the acquisition of technology and product assets of Opticore AB, based in Gothenburg, Sweden.[4] Opticore is specialized in real time visualisation primarily for the carmakers industry.
On August 28, 2007, Autodesk announced the acquisition of California-based PlassoTech, developers of CAE applications. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.[5]
On November 25, 2007, Autodesk announced the intent to acquire Robobat, a France-based developer of structural engineering analysis applications. The acquisition was completed on January 15, 2008.[6][7]
On May 1, 2008, Autodesk announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Moldflow Corporation, a leading provider of injection molding simulation software.[8]
On May 7, 2008, Autodesk announced that it has completed the acquisition of Kynogon SA, the privately held maker of Kynapse artificial intelligence middleware.[9] Paris-based Kynogon specialized in video game middleware and simulation.
The same day, Autodesk also announced the acquisition of REALVIZ S.A..[10] REALVIZ was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Sophia Antipolis, France. REALVIZ's flagship products are "Stitcher" software for the creation of panoramas and 360 degree virtual tours, and "ImageModeler" software to produce 3D models from photographs.
Those numerous acquisition seems to be a trend in the strategy of Autodesk : buy small- to medium-sized software companies around the world both to get their very specific know-how and to avoid the rise of potential future competitors.[citation needed]
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.
Autodesk is now using SharePoint to manage its in-house intranet.[citation needed]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ AutoCAD Major Feature Release History
- ^ Autodesk & Alias (2006-03-12). Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
- ^ Autodesk Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Skymatter, Makers of Mudbox 3D Brush-based Modeling Software.. Autodesk (6 August 2007).
- ^ Autodesk Completes Acquisition of Opticore AB (2007-08-20). Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
- ^ Autodesk Acquires PlassoTech. Taume News (28 August 2007).
- ^ Autodesk Announces Intent to Acquire Robobat. Autodesk (25 November 2007).
- ^ Autodesk Completes Acquisition of Robobat. Autodesk (15 January 2008).
- ^ Autodesk Announces Intent to Acquire Moldflow (2008-05-01). Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
- ^ Autodesk Completes Acquisition of Kynogon SA (2008-05-07). Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
- ^ Autodesk Acquires Assets of REALVIZ, Developer of Image-Based Content Creation Software (2008-05-07). Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
[edit] External links
- Autodesk Official site
- Autodesk Blogs
- All Autodesk product usability, research, and beta testing
- Autodesk Labs
- Autodesk Product-based Peer-to-Peer User Community
- Autodesk Student Community
- Early AutoCAD information
- The Autodesk File, a History of Autodesk
- Autodesk and AutoCAD History Site
- AutoCAD Civil 3D's Official Page
