Early History of AutoDesk
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When I read this first section of an interview with John Walker, one of the founders of Autodesk, it struck me how simmillar the beginnings of the gorilla was to the humble beginnings of Sketchup. Scary in a way because it makes you wonder where GSU will be in 10-15 years time. Brought back so many memories of hardware platforms and operationg systems and acad versions I used over the years.
http://through-the-interface.typepad.com/through_the_interface/2008/09/an-interview-wi.html
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From Interview:
@unknownuser said:
today the investment that goes into the icons on the screen is greater than what went into AutoCAD
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See also http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/autoframe.html
Chris
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@unknownuser said:
today the investment that goes into the icons on the screen is greater than what went into AutoCAD
You have to bear in mind that sometimes the icons may represent the major part of the annual upgrade...
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@solo said:
today the investment that goes into the icons on the screen is greater than what went into AutoCAD
... and the investment that goes into streamlining the UI and making Autocad more efficient to use and learn is, uhm, hang on...this can't be right, it says here "$2.43", uhm, there must be some mistake.
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Jackson,
I was under the impression the bloke had retired in 1988.- My information obviously needs an upgrade.
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Well, you're partly right, Autodesk made him redundant in 1988, but when he applied for similar positions with other developers and told them he had been the lead designer of Autocad's innovative command line UI for some reason no-one would offer him a job (Apple were particularly derisive). With nothing better to do he returned to the Autodesk HQ, snuck in during the security guard's cigarette break and much to his surprise found his office in the basement next to the plant room was unlocked and still unoccupied. More eerie still was that it was exactly as he'd left it 3 months previously, his last cup of coffee still sitting on his desk coagulated with a thick layer of blue mould on top- it was peculiar, almost as if Autodesk had no intention of ever revising their 1988 UI.
With no income his mortgage soon lapsed so he moved a mattress into his old office, scavenged for left-overs in his ex-colleagues' waste bins when they left at the end of the day (no-one ever did overtime; even when a new annual version was coming out it always seemed like they had all the revisions done months ahead of time, paradoxically sometimes more than 12 months ahead of schedule) and to this day he sits in his office during working hours, rocking back and forth, chanting from memory the entire list of Autocad's command shortcuts. He can do the current cycle in under 4 weeks and incidentally is actually the only person in the world who has committed them all to memory, but he is fickle- he has his favourites: "dimstyle" and "imageframe" keep him company in his text-based solitude...
..but every year he has a ritual act of revenge: the night before that year's version code is sent to the CD burners, while everyone else is partying, patting themselves on the back for another week's, uhm, I mean year's hard work, he adds one single character of code making any files saved in previous versions incompatible with the current one. He smirks to himself on this special day every year knowing that surely, the day will come when Autodesk's customers won't stand for it any longer, will rise up and abandon this antiquated worktool forever... won't they?...
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Well, you're partly right, Autodesk made him redundant in 1988, but when he applied for similar positions with other developers and told them he had been the lead designer of Autocad's innovative command line UI for some reason no-one would offer him a job (Apple were particularly derisive). With nothing better to do he returned to the Autodesk HQ, snuck in during the security guard's cigarette break and much to his surprise found his office in the basement next to the plant room was unlocked and still unoccupied. More eerie still was that it was exactly as he'd left it 3 months previously, his last cup of coffee still sitting on his desk coagulated with a thick layer of blue mould on top- it was peculiar, almost as if Autodesk had no intention of ever revising their 1988 UI.
With no income his mortgage soon lapsed so he moved a mattress into his old office, scavenged for left-overs in his ex-colleagues' waste bins when they left at the end of the day (no-one ever did overtime; even when a new annual version was coming out it always seemed like they had all the revisions done months ahead of time, paradoxically sometimes more than 12 months ahead of schedule) and to this day he sits in his office during working hours, rocking back and forth, chanting from memory the entire list of Autocad's command shortcuts. He can do the current cycle in under 4 weeks and incidentally is actually the only person in the world who has committed them all to memory, but he is fickle- he has his favourites: "dimstyle" and "imageframe" keep him company in his text-based solitude...
..but every year he has a ritual act of revenge: the night before that year's version code is sent to the CD burners, while everyone else is partying, patting themselves on the back for another week's, uhm, I mean year's hard work, he adds one single character of code making it impossible for customers using older versions to open files saved in the current version. He smirks to himself on this special day every year knowing that surely, the day will come when Autodesk's customers won't stand for it any longer, will rise up and abandon this antiquated worktool forever... won't they?...
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You should write books jackson, you could sell that.
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I don't even want to think of Auto desk
, gives me an instant headacheTodays pictures would rather be that of fancy dressed, important, CIA looking dudes gathered around a new age'y cocktail bar, wielding black berries making calls.....
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The first AutoCad version I used was Rel.9 DOS. Before that I used VersaCad. Many moons ago.
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@jcdb said:
The first AutoCad version I used was Rel.9 DOS. Before that I used VersaCad. Many moons ago.
Would you be able to describe in a few words, how you generate the 3D PDF out of SU?
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@bruell said:
Would you be able to describe in a few words, how you generate the 3D PDF out of SU?
I bought the software from:
http://wiki.renderplus.com/index.php?title=Main_Pageyou can download a trial version
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@unknownuser said:
and abandon this antiquated worktool forever... won't they?...
done.
did so some time ago... just waiting for the rest of my collegues to
catch up to the freedomthey day they deliberately made Viz's last release so that it would NOT use all my cores...to force me to buy Max... was the day I jumped ship forever from the bloodsucking ba$#@$$%s.
loved that little story, btw. glad I stumbled accross it, thanks Jackson! put quite a fine point on my sentiments. I thought the thing was archaic the day I started using it back in v. 10.
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@jcdb said:
The first AutoCad version I used was Rel.9 DOS. Before that I used VersaCad. Many moons ago.
Version 2.5 was the first for me, back in 1986. I was brought an IBM AT in one box, a card with some additional memory in another, a monitor in a third, and ACAD on floppies in the fourth box. I had only used a word processor before. Training? No money for that. First I had to figure out how to install the OS on the enormous 40 Mb harddrive...
Anssi
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