Autodesk’s former CEO Carol Bartz used to be fond of saying, “Look around you: If God didn’t create it, AutoCAD did.” That wasn’t just hubris, either. For a time — especially during the late ’80s and early ’90s — Bartz’s statement was actually pretty accurate. During that period, Autodesk’s computer-aided drafting (CAD) software was pervasive across a wide variety of fields. In fact, most of the buildings that went up during that time were designed, in some capacity or another, using AutoCAD. On Thursday, Nov. 15, AutoCAD — and the company that created it — celebratex their 25th anniversary. In that quarter-century, much has changed in the CAD world. The industry has become more diversified and competitive, yet the same things that made computer-aided design commercially popular 25 years ago remain just as true today. “What AutoCAD did, if you look at a snapshot of the past 25 years, was really to democratize computer-aided drafting,” says Mark Fritts, a senior manager at Autodesk and, prior to that, a licensed architect in California.
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