For those that may be interested. For the predisposed the referenced pieces are interesting reading. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
1982: Autodesk founded. (2) AutoCAD v1 released. (3) (Based on Interact written by co-founder Mike Riddle. (2))
1985: PTC founded. (2)
1988: Autodesk ships AutoSolid. (1) Based on Cadetron (PADL-2 C recode) acquisition. (2)(3) (Might have been called "SolidWorks". (3)) PTC ships first commercial version of Pro/Engineer ($9,500) (2)
1990: Autodesk Advanced Modeling Extension (AME, AutoCAD option module). (2)(3) Autodesk licenses ACIS, Applied Geometry Corp., D-Cubed. (2)
1992: Autodesk acquires MES (becomes AutoSurf). (3)
1993: Autodesk introduces Designer (ACIS) and AutoSurf. (2)(3) Solidworks (Winchester Design Systems) conceived. (2)
1995: Autodesk releases AutoSurf v2.1. (1) Designer v1.2. (1) "a parametric solid modeling tool" (40,000 copies sold by end of '95)
1996: Solidworks ships. (2) (Autodesk '93 to '96 sales total about 1.75 billion (all divisions). (2) Autodesk production release of Mechanical Desktop. (2) (Integrated AutoCAD, Designer, AutoSurf.)
Autodesk begins development of Rubicon / Inventor. (2)
1999: Autodesk Inventor v1. (2)
2002: Autodesk bundled Inventor, AutoCAD Mechanical and Mechanical Desktop into a single product bundle called Inventor Series (2) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(1)
:-)