25 years of AutoCAD?

AutoCAD is turning 25! Crikey, I must getting old as remember most of it!

My First AutoCAD Drawing - Bryn's scooter design because mine was too 'curvy' for beginners

We first used AutoCAD R2.something at Tech. I say “we” as there were few CAD PC’s so several of students used one together. My first CAD drawing was a group effort, a side elevation of Bryn Chapple's motor scooter project which took us several weeks!

My project, inspired by Luigi Colani really needed splines, which only arrived in R10, and was deemed too much for AutoCAD beginners.

Unitec Product Design Year 3 | Casper Scooter

AutoCAD R2 on Unitec's First CAD Machines*

There was limited access to slow, if top spec for their day, machines. The desire to draw curves (this was just 2D not 3D) and fill them with hatch patterns plus the “first encounter with AutoCAD factor” meant it was a long process.

I still remember “Beth”, can’t remember her surname, who came to New Zealand from Autodesk to spread the AutoCAD word. She was amused, or maybe bewildered, by design students trying to do things real draftsmen wouldn’t attempt.

I think it resulted in a few calls back to the US for updates or test code. Thinking back, I wonder where Beth is now & regret not having that .dwg other than as a print…

From R2 to R9?

Then there was a gap until R9 before I encountered AutoCAD again. For most of those computer free years it was literally back to the drawing board but since then it’s been all digital.

My own first CAD PC is a metre away as I type this and still runs fine. Not that there’s much use for a 486 dx33 with 8mb ram which cost $5150.25 (in 1993).

It’s a coincidence The Warehouse, my employer, is also 25 later this year. They didn’t use AutoCAD internally until sometime in early/mid ‘90’s. I’ve been using it, or AutoCAD based software, there since 1997! Now I do feel old…