Autodesk, Inc. , a design software and digital content company, was founded by John Walker (programmer) and 12 other co-founders in 1982. Over its history, it has had various locations in Marin County, California. It is currently headquartered in San Rafael, California.

=Organization=

Autodesk is organized into two segments: the Design Solutions Group and Autodesk_Media_and_Entertainment division. The Design Solutions Group (DSG) encompasses Autodesk s core competency of design technology applications while MED provides media and entertainment solutions.

The Design Solutions Segment is divided into five industry-specific business divisions: the Platform Technology Division (PTD), the Manufacturing Solutions Division (MSD), the Infrastructure Solutions Division (ISD), the Building Solutions Division (BSD) and Other , which includes #Collaboration Services and #Consulting.

=Portfolio=

The principal product offerings from the Design Solutions Segment are described below:

:* The Platform Technology Division develops and manages Autodesk s flagship product, AutoCAD, and AutoCAD LT. :* The Manufacturing Solutions Division develops and manages #Inventor Series and #Mechanical. :* The Infrastructure Solutions Division develops and manages #Map, #Land Desktop, #Civil3D and #MapGuide . :* The Building Solutions Division develops and manages #Architectural Desktop and #Revit.

The principal product offerings from the Media and Entertainment Division are 3ds max, flame , inferno , smoke , toxik and lustre .

Other products include the #Subscription Program and #LocationLogic.

=History=

Autodesk featured AutoCAD (formerly named MicroCAD) at COMDEX in 1982. Initially AutoCAD was written for multiple operating systems, focusing on the CP/M architecture, but also made a branch for DOS and Unix.

The company s ultimate goal was to achieve a major software brand ( limitations those days), available on a widespread platform. It made a CAD tool, good enough to create detailed technical drawings, possible and affordable to many smaller design, engineering, and architecture companies.

The further versions and implementations (Release 2.1 introduced a new (for those days) concept in CAD and software industry: the open platform software, by means of the introduction of a built-in , customized to program built-in particular AutoCAD solutions. Furthermore, they also implemented a C subset of its own libraries and made it available to developers.

This brought as a result the evolutionary growth of a large collection of minor software companies developing solutions for AutoCAD as the main platform (as a operating system one could say). Since then, Autodesk has profited greatly from these developments by buying the cutting edge companies that made major improvements to its software. These companies code is then brought into the Autodesk codebase where it can be retooled for use in new products.

Since Release 12, the company abandoned the Unix environment, and since Release 14 it discontinued the MS-DOS releases and worked closely together with Microsoft sharing its base technology to achieve superior performance in the Windows operating system.

AutoCAD is the de facto standard non-specialized CAD solutions and its file formats AutoCAD_DXF and DWG are the most common for CAD interchange.

Autodesk has now ventured into the world of midrange 3D CAD with the introduction of , and Pro-E, owned by PTC.

=External links=