![]() In 1981 Unigraphics released its UniSolids CAD software based on Voelcker's PADL-2 CSG solid modeling kernel and then in 1982, Ian Braid, Charles Lang and the Shape Data team in Cambridge, England, released the Romulus b-rep solid modeler the first commercial solid modeling kernel designed for straightforward integration into CAD software. Throughout the 1980s, the new generation of powerful UNIX workstations and emerging 3D rendering was inevitably shifting the CAD software market to 3D and solid modeling. Although PCs and Macs steadily increased in power throughout the 1980s and AutoCAD continued to gain substantial market share in the 2D CAD software market (despite being ridiculed by the leading CAD software vendors) the general lack of processor power and especially the poor graphics performance compared to UNIX workstations meant that it was not to be until the next decade that PCs would have their revolutionary effect on the CAD software industry. Apple had released the first Macintosh 128 in 1984 and in 1985 Diehl Graphsoft was founded and released MiniCAD which rapidly became the best selling CAD software on the Mac. In 1984 Bentley Systems was founded and released MicroStation, a PC implementation of Intergraph's IGDS CAD software and the following year Micro-Control Systems was founded and released the first 3D wire-frame CAD software for PCs "CADKEY". Adra Systems was founded in 1983 and soon after began shipping its CADRA 2D CAD software. ![]() IBM shipped its first PC in 1981 and Autodesk, founded in 1982, demonstrated the first CAD software for PCs, "AutoCAD Release 1", in November 1982. PCs also first appeared in the early 1980s. The mainframe and minicomputer makers (IBM, DEC, Burroughs, Unisys, Data-General, Wang etc.) suddenly began to find themselves undercut and outflanked as the newcomers used their UNIX open-architecture advantage to focus on rapidly improving hardware and growing market share while the traditional vendors were forced to maintain expensive proprietary operating-systems supporting legacy hardware. Apollo Computer started the trend in 1980, then Sun Microsystems in 1981 and Silicon Graphics in 1982. ![]() UNIX's open architecture opened the performance computer market to a new wave of low-cost, low-maintenance, high-performance workstations with hardware optimized specifically for science, engineering and of course CAD software applications. GE also moved into the CAD market in 1981 with its acquisition of CALMA which at the time was earning over $100M annually.ĭEC was the undisputed #1 vendor in the crowded engineering minicomputer market of the early 1980s but a new challenge, the UNIX workstation, was emerging to revolutionize the computing and CAD software markets far more rapidly than anyone, most especially DEC, anticipated. CATIA Version 1 (which was an add-on for CADAM providing 3D surface modeling and NC functions) was released in 1982 and the IBM-Dassault partnership continues to the present time. Avions Marcel Dassault created its Dassault Systemes subsidiary in 1981 and signed a sales and marketing agreement allowing IBM to resell the CATIA CAD software. At that time most successful CAD software was sold as a turnkey hardware/software package and realizing the apparent commercial potential of CAD software to help sell its computers, HP set up its commercial CAD software group in 1980 to develop the its PE CAD software. In 1983 Intergraph released the InterAct and InterPro range of 3D complex surface modeling CAD software based on DEC's VAX and MicroVAX processors. In the CAD software market, M&S Computing renamed itself to Intergraph in 1980 and had a successful IPO in 1981. In many ways, DEC's MicroVAX paradoxically marked the company's apparent technology lead and yet foreshadowed the impending workstation era (which would ultimately be DEC's demise) by setting new standards in price, performance and accessibility and becoming the first performance computer capable of running CAD software but not requiring special power supplies or cooling. In the early 1980s DEC's new VAX range of minicomputers seemed set to dominate engineering computing and CAD software for the decade. (Pour agrandir une image 1 clic sur l'image 2 clic pour revenir(To enlarge a picture 1 mouse clic on it 2 clic to come back)ĬAD software began the 1980s as a research topic that had just blossomed into commercial profit but the CAD software industry was to end the decade facing the stark reality of harsh commercial competition driven by frenetically commercial product development schedules and unprecedented change in both hardware and CAD software technology.
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