Join us on a journey through 30 years of AutoCAD history

AutoCAD celebrates 30 years of its existence. Come with us on a journey through its rich history in the attached infographic. From humble beginnings in a version that worked in a whopping 128kB of memory(!), through Rel.10 - the first version that supported 3D, and through the launch of "industrial" AutoCAD versions in 1995, up to the latest cloud and mobile AutoCAD WS.

Many of us went together with AutoCAD in our career path so we could certainly add several other, personal milestones and spots to this history map.

The first version of AutoCAD - 1.0 - was introduced at the Comdex show in December 1982. Here, in the former Czechoslovakia, most AutoCAD users first encountered it in the versions V2.6 and in the first Czech localized version Rel.10 (back in 1988). In 1994, the first real AutoCAD version of Windows was launched. Since version 2000, AutoCAD changed to a regular yearly release cycle. The current version of AutoCAD 2013 is already the 27th release of AutoCAD. Today, AutoCAD exists in more than 15 industrial versions (Mechanical, Electrical, Civil 3D ....) and in about 20 language localizations (software and/or documentation). Billions of drawings from various fields of design has been created in its DWG file format. For decades, AutoCAD is the undisputed standard in CAD.

AutoCAD with its very long history is quite a unique example in the the ​​software industry - and due to recent technological developments (cloud, mobile devices) it seems that even long future is waiting for it.