Essay On The Evolution Of CAD

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The Evolution of Computer-Aided Design (CAD)
Although in 1957 Dr. Patrick J, Hanratty developed PRONTO, first numerical control programming tool, the father of CAD is usually considered Ivan Sutherland that in 1963 developed Sketchpad as part of his MIT PhD Thesis. In Sketchpad the user interacted with the software through a light pen on a large CRT monitor (it was very innovative, at that time computers ran only in batch mode using punched cards and magnetic tapes). Ivan Sutherland and his sketchpad
1960-1970
The first CAD systems were made by a manufacturer in the 1960s and it concerned 2D drafting applications. …show more content…

The CAD market was dominated by few companies: IBM-Dassault Systemes, EDS-Unigraphics, Parametric Technology and SDRC. In 1994 Microsoft released its first 32-bit operating system and Intel its first Pentium Pro. ACIS and Parasolid were quickly available for Windows NT. In 1995 with the first SolidWorks release 3D CAD was available for desktop pc. The advent of new economic Windows based 3D CAD system heavily modifies the market: mid-price 3D CAD category was born. In 1996 Intergraph released SolidEdge, an ACIS based CAD very similar to SolidWorks, and Autodesk, whose AutoCAD was losing market share, released Mechanical Desktop that quickly become the 1st selling CAD in the world. In 1997 Dassault Systemes (CATIA’s developer) acquired SolidWorks for $320M and EDS-Unigraphics acquired SolidEdge. In 1998 was released CATIA V5 fully supported on Windows. In 1999 Autodesk released Inventor a 3D CAD based on the ACIS kernel and not on AutoCAD (as the previous Mechanical Desktop). In late 1990s CAD developers concentrated on improving PDM capabilities and becoming internet enabled and no revolutionary technologies

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