Between the Lines

Throwback Thursday - Farewell to Three Decades of Autodesk Memories

For 30+ years, I've been the proud curator of an ever-growing collection of Autodesk product memorabilia and history. What started as a personal hobby has grown into one of the largest collections of CAD history, spanning the evolution of one of the industry's most well known design industry software companies. My collection is a mix of items I've personally acquired and generous gifts from fellow CAD geeks, former colleagues, and industry veterans. It's a time capsule of Autodesk's early days Among the gems are one-of-a-kind pieces that tell unique stories of Autodesk's development like an AutoCAD-86 or 1.1 manual or floppy disk or Revit 1.0 CD-ROM. Alongside these, I've amassed a delightful array of geeky CAD paraphernalia – the kind that brings a smile to any long-time AutoCAD user's face like an “My Other Car Was Designed by AutoCAD” license plate holder, R14 mug or beach flip flops that leaves R14 in the sand, or first edition versions of CADalyst Magazine. However, as with all good things, this chapter of my collecting journey is coming to a close. The sheer volume of items has outgrown my ability to properly maintain, store, and showcase them. With a heavy heart, I'm considering auctioning off parts of the collection to ensure these pieces of software history find new homes where they'll be appreciated. A few items may go to non profit technology museum collections to preserve and display. To my fellow CAD enthusiasts and tech history buffs: keep an eye out for upcoming announcements. You might soon have the chance to own a piece of this CAD legacy. Whether you're looking for a rare artifact or just a fun blast from the past, there might be something in this collection for you. Read more →

RIP Autodesk Founder John Walker

Autodesk founder John Walker passed away, leaving a legacy that transformed millions of careers, lives, and industries. Read more →

Autodesk Founder John Walker’s GPTs on Autodesk History

Autodesk founder John Walker published his own GPT last week. This GPT is for learning about the startup History of a Startup and is based on his Autodesk File publication. Read more →

Happy 41st Birthday Autodesk

Today, I celebrate and acknowledge the 41st anniversary of Autodesk's founding on January 30, 1982. Over the past 41 years, Autodesk has established itself as a leader in the design and engineering software industry, and has played a significant role in shaping the way professionals in architecture, engineering, construction, and media and entertainment industries work. Read more →

Autodesk Community Conversations for January & February 2022

Join us for one of the new Autodesk Community Conversations! "Autodesk Turns 40 Years Young" January 28th "Dynamo inside a Host" February 3rd "AutoCAD Electrical with Tifani and Tiffany" February 10th https://autode.sk/3qGKTjd Read more →

40 Years Old - Lets have Some Fun and Tell Stories

No, it is not me turning 40... Autodesk turns 40 years young on January 30, 2022 after being founded January 30th, 1982. To celebrate this momentous occasion the Autodesk Community will be sharing some of your stories and memorabilia over... Read more →

Between the Lines is 18 Years Old on Saturday

On August 21, 2003, this blog started thanks to the encouragement of two Autodesk colleagues Bill Johnston and Eric Wright. I was one of the top posting members in the Autodesk Discussion Forums on my own time, and at times... Read more →

Throwback Thursday- What a Long Strange Trip It's Been

Fun historical Autodesk fact. The singer/guitarist for the band Grateful Dead Jerry Garcia once visited an Autodesk office. Read more →

Fun Finds

In packing my house up to move, I am going through boxes of my technology and Autodesk history items and having a blast remembering all the tech and fun times. There is a slew of my phones and PDA, from... Read more →

Autodesk Turns 39

In Marin County, California, a small group of people got together January 30, 1982 and formed Autodesk. As founder John Walker stated “the game has changed.” Today marks the 39th birthday of Autodesk. Autodesk’s Flying founders ”Autodesk Founders. They didn't... Read more →

Throwback Thursday TBT – Simply The Best

Who knew in the boxes of 38 years of Autodesk history that I have that we could connect Tina Turner and her hit song Simply The Best with Autodesk the software company. I received this 45rpm vinyl record from Dietmar... Read more →

Throwback Thursday – AutoCAD-80 version 1.2 Circa 1982

I may have found someone with the oldest AutoCAD release software outside of Autodesk. Of course internally we had early 1.0 alphas, betas, and development copies that were never released. In fact AutoCAD-80 and AutoCAD-86 version 1.0 was never commercially... Read more →

Throwback Thursday - Space Shuttle

AutoCAD 1.4 circa 1984/85 and the Space Shuttle drawing by Autodesk founder John Walker. This is one of the earliest known DWG sample files used to show AutoCAD-86. I captured this on a retro 286/287 that I run in my... Read more →

Throwback Thursday - The Very First AutoCAD Logo from 1982

Throwback Thursday – Mining Data from Old AutoCAD Floppies

If you read the word “Floppies” and scratched your head, you might be less than 30 years old and never seen what we had to work with to store data and install products back in the early days. There were... Read more →

Throwback Thursday - The Solar System Drawn to Scale in AutoCAD DWG - Scale is Everything

Take a trip to the Universe to 1:1 scale in AutoCAD. https://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2018/02/the-solar-system-drawn-to-scale-in-autocad-dwg-scale-accuracy-is-everything.html Read more →

AutoCAD Release History – 35 Releases and Counting

AutoCAD Release History (https://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/autocad-release-history.html) AutoCAD 1.0 December 1982 (Release 1) AutoCAD 1.2 April 1983 (Release 2) AutoCAD 1.3 August 1983 (Release 3) AutoCAD 1.4 October 1983 (Release 4) AutoCAD 2.0 October 1984 (Release 5) AutoCAD 2.1 May 1985 (Release 6)... Read more →

Throwback Thursday – 3ds Max Flashback

I have been using 3DS Max since release 1.0 and 3D Studio for DOS before that where we had the Shaper, the Lofter, and that other mode I always forget when animation was really hard and rendering frames took hours... Read more →

Solar System Drawn to Scale in AutoCAD DWG

An oldie but a goodie! Back in AutoCAD version 2.18 (circa 1985), Autodesk placed a sample drawing with AutoCAD named the Solar.DWG to demonstrate the precision of AutoCAD back in the early eighties. AutoCAD was based used 64bit floating point... Read more →

Congratulations Old Timers

At 22 years with Autodesk, many consider me an “old timer”, but I'm really not compared to others at Autodesk. Internally back in the day Autodesk employees referred to themselves as “deskers”, and “old timers” was a term of respect... Read more →

Learn AutoCAD Cassette from 1986

In a blast from the past I took the infamous cassette tape in my Autodesk historical collection and purchased a cassette tape to MP3 converter to see if the 34 year old cassette had anything good on it after all this time, and who was the voice on the tape. The cassette was still good! Low and behold it had someone I had not expected, Autodesk founder John walker narrating the 30 minute cassette tape and at the end talking about product support and bug reporting. Upon listening I was transported magically back to 1986. Read more →

Throwback Thursday – Autodesk CAD Camera

Here is a very rare one from my Autodesk historic collection. CAD Cameras 1.0 was a utility to convert paper drawings “digitizing to AutoCAD using a flatbed or fixed-distance scanner in 1985. I actually have the entire package with the... Read more →

Happy 38th Birthday Autodesk

Autodesk was founded on January 30th, 1982. Today marks the 38th birthday of Autodesk becoming a legal U.S. corporation. Read more →

Throwback Thursday – How to Get Started in AutoCAD Circa 1986

This book is about 8 pages making the irony not lost on me. Learn AutoCAD Without Reading the Manual. Here is the tough AutoCAD History trivia question: Who is Kelvin R. Throop, the author of this book? Read more →

AutoCAD 1.4 with RetroCAD

Retro AutoCAD is so very cool to see. Having personally over the years cultivated and documented a collection of historical Autodesk software, events, images, and memorabilia (Autodesk History Gallery), it was a pleasure to find someone else that shares this... Read more →