Between the Lines

Throwback Thursday - AutoCAD 86

I received another great addition to my collection of old AutoCAD releases, a AutoCAD 86 version 1.40 manual circa February 1984 from Mike Boldrick. This was one of the first available releases of AutoCAD ever shipped to customers. I will publish more of this old manual in the future for nostalgic fun as we will soon celebrate the 35th year of AutoCAD. In AutoCAD 86 version 1.40 there was no UNDO command, just an OOPS command as well as only... Read more →

AutoCAD Family Feud Survey

Survey Says, Be at Autodesk University for: DING! Great classes, networking, seeing what the future holds, and fun! Please join Heidi Hewett, Lynn Allen and me at the AutoCAD Family Feud Tuesday 1:00pm at Autodesk University. We need your responses for the Feud at this survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Q25PT65. It only takes a minute or two. Details on the social media reception coming soon for those that actively participate in social media throughout the year covering Autodesk products and technologies.There will also... Read more →

Throwback Thursday – Not all Bugs are Bad

Back in AutoCAD R12, R13, and R14 there was a bug that was not bad, a bug with benefits. The bug allowed you to speed up the plot regen by over 200 percent faster making the plot preview and plotting much faster. All you had to do what hit the keyboard spacebar while the plot was regenerating and BAM it sped up to light speed. Several years back when I was on the AutoCAD Team I discussed this good old... Read more →

Throwback Thursday - When Was that AutoCAD Feature Added

When was 3D or Dimensioning added to AutoCAD? A great list from Autodesk founder John Walker of major features in AutoCAD and when they were added to AutoCAD up to 1992. AutoCAD Major Feature Release History Read more →

Throwback Thursday – Me in 1997

In 1997 I was an Autodesk customer working at Oregon Iron Works here in the Portland Oregon area. I gave an interview as an AutoCAD R14 early pre-release alpha tester on how much better AutoCAD R14 was than the previous AutoCAD R13 release. Rohit Arora found the AutoCAD R14 demo CD-ROMs today and posted to LinkedIn tagging me. Warning: This image and video is not for the faint of heart. Video: https://youtu.be/fThsTwTNkQc Read more →

Throwback Thursday – AutoCAD Simulator

Back in the day of AutoCAD Release 12 there was an actual product simulator available as a tutorial training product. Read more →

AutoCAD 2017 is Release 32 or 31

I am in the process of updating my AutoCAD History page after we just released the new AutoCAD 2017 Monday March 21, 2016. AutoCAD 2017 was codenamed Nautilus in alpha and beta testing prior to being officially released publicly. Update: My good friend Vladimir Michl of http://www.cadforum.cz spotted the error in my accounting he said AutoCAD 2017 should be 31 not 32 because I copy pasted an error and 2016 should have been release 30. While he is absolutely correct,... Read more →

Nozzle DWG for Throwback Thursday

AutoCAD 2.6 included a sample drawing of a nozzle that has been one of the iconic sample drawings in AutoCAD release history. While it may seem trivial today to draw this, back in the early 1980’s it was really challenging for the creator of the drawing Don Strimbu in 1983 using a primitive featured AutoCAD running on floppy disks and a slow 8086 computer. I have a running version of AutoCAD 2.18 that I run in a virtual machine from... Read more →

Throwback Thursday - AutoCAD at COMDEX 1984

This 5.25” floppy represents the very early days of AutoCAD where the introduction of the 2 year old AutoCAD version 2 was being exhibited at the FALL COMDEX 1984. AutoCAD 86 was first shown publicly at COMDEX 1982. It is amazing how far technology and Autodesk has come and transformed over the past 30 plus years. Read more from Autodesk Founder John Walker about COMDEX 1984 and some of the photos. Read more →

Throwback Thursday - AutoCAD 86 Floppies

You may have seen a 5.25” floppy in the 1980’s, but what about a 8” floppy? Back in 1984 AutoCAD-86 version 2.40 was released for the NEC platform on 8” floppy disks. Increasingly these days most under the age of 30 have never seen a floppy disk and don’t recognize what the floppy image on the standard software “save” icons really is. Read more →

TBT Throwback Thursday AutoCAD 1.4 Floppies

AutoCAD 1.4 circa 1984. The floppies believe it or not are still readable provided you have a floppy drive. Read more →

AutoCAD 2.18 Fun Challenge from Autodesk University Australia

Recently my Irish friend living in Australia Sean Twomey asked me how I managed to get AutoCAD 2.18 to run on modern hardware. I told him all you needed was to create a virtual machine and then create a virtual disk smaller than 10Mb because in 1985 apparently a hard drive beyond 10Mb was crazy thinking the 30 year old AutoCAD version would not launch. Sean got his version running just in time for Autodesk University Australia in Sydney held... Read more →

#TBT Throwback Thursday Autodesk AutoCAD R2 at 1984 COMDEX

On this Throwback Thursday I share with you a scan I just did of one of the most important floppy disks in Autodesk’s over 30 years of history besides the original AutoCAD 1.0 floppy disks that I also have, This floppy contains the demo drawing files shown at COMDEX 1984 where AutoCAD R2 took the industry by storm and became what it is today 31 years later. I will share images of the drawings at a later date. Remember these... Read more →

Throwback Thursday AutoCAD-86 Version 1.1 Floppy

AutoCAD-86 version 1.1 original floppy disk for the old Victor platform from 1982/1983. Cheers Shaan Read more →

Throwback Thursday – CADalyst Magazine April 1984

Throwback Thursday - 12 Million Lines of Code

In 2007 I met with Autodesk founder John Walker at his home in Switzerland for a discussion about the 25th anniversary of AutoCAD. We discussed a lot, mostly about early Autodesk and AutoCAD history. We got on the topic of comparing his days writing early AutoCAD code and the current AutoCAD development. John asked how large the source code in lines was in the current release of AutoCAD which was AutoCAD 2008 at the time. I answered John with “close... Read more →

Throwback Thursday

The very first bound AutoCAD Manual and Command Reference. Read more →

Throwback Thursday AutoCAD 2.18 Commands

It's Thursday (Throwback Thursday), the day after hump day when you show photos or info from history and the wayback machine. Today I proudly present you a screen capture I took from AutoCAD 2.18 circa 1985 showing all commands it supported. Now contrast that with the hundreds of commands today's AutoCAD has and realize how much functionality has been added in the past 30 years. . Did you notice there is no UNDO but there is an OOPS command? Read more →

Throwback Thursday Autodesk 3D Studio R1 Circa 1990

On this Throwback Thursday I give you Autodesk's 3D Studio R1 for DOS from 1990. 3D Studio was the predecessor to the very popular Autodesk 3ds Max. This is from back when when 3D was for more difficult and primitive on old x86 PCs running DOS and you created everything in two steps using the Shaper and Lofter then rendered it. I have this old 3D Studio "carpet bag" package with all original disks. I think in those days we... Read more →

Engineers Guide to Drinks Lives On and Will Move to 3D

The Engineers Guide to Drinks drawing or Infographic as it is now called in reality was really just a test drawing was originally created by someone that was very creative or very bored in order to test pen plotters back in 1972. I was not the original creator, and never have taken credit for it other than re-drawing it again in AutoCAD and bringing it back to life. In bringing it back to life on this blog it has taken... Read more →

Throwback Thursday - Autodesk Puck

Been traveling 2 weeks and need to catch up so stay tuned, but first this gem given to meat last weeks Autodesk University 2014 by Kean Walmsey of Autodesk. Feast your eyes on this pristine heavy gem of hardware. What year was it given out? It is a Magellan Space Mouse from then named LogiCad by Logitech. I am going to hazard a guess it is from the very early 1990s. Here is the back side of the Space Mouse Read more →

Autodesk Flashback - AUTODESK the Software

Back in the early 1980's when Autodesk was being founded there was indeed a product named AUTODESK. Trivia for bonus points: What exactly did it do? Read more →

Happy 32nd Birthday Autodesk

On this day January 30th, 1982, 32 years ago a small group of people held an initial meeting in Marin County California to organize what became Autodesk. They risked it all including all the money they could scrape together and it paid off for millions of people from employees, customers, partners, and investors. A sincere thank you to John Walker and all the ‘deskers’ that followed in the founders and pioneers footsteps to this day as you literally changed the... Read more →

Keep Calm and…

One of the finest features to ever be added to software including AutoCAD back in the mid 1980’s in AutoCAD Release 2.5 because apparently users prior to that never ever made a mistake. Funny history tidbit: Before the UNDO command was added into AutoCAD you had to close the drawing without saving to be able to undo what you last did. Read more →

Friday Flashback - AutoCAD's First User Manual

The front page from the first published AutoCAD User Manual for AutoCAD v1.1 from May 1983. Notice the retro Autodesk logo. Read more →