MCADCafe Editorial 
Jeff Rowe
Jeffrey Rowe has over 40 years of experience in all aspects of industrial design, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing. On the publishing side, he has written over 1,000 articles for CAD, CAM, CAE, and other technical publications, as well as consulting in many capacities in the design … More » MCAD Mystery: Whatever Happened To . . . ?July 30th, 2014 by Jeff Rowe
If you’ve been around the technical/engineering software business as long as I have, as with any business, nothing stays the same. This includes founders, executives, and other major players who were once prominent in the industry, but for many reasons have moved on. Some, to other companies in the industry, some to other industries, and some who have just plain disappeared. History never stands still and the CAx industry is no exception. Although it’s a bit dated and based on a research project, check out the video below for a very short recap on the history of CAD:
A Short History of CAD During the coming weeks and months we’ll try and track down players who were formerly very prominent in the MCAD arena and see what they’re up to now. Some of these folks include:
Obviously, this list only scratches the surface of possibilities. If there is anyone currently or formerly renowned in the CAD/CAM/CAE/CAx industry you would like to see us track down and update what they’re up to, send an email to me at jeff@ibsystems.com with a subject line that reads, “Where Are They Now?”, and we’ll do our best to respond in an upcoming blog on a person’s whereabouts and more recent accomplishments.
This should be entertaining, educational, and fun. Tags: Applicon, Ashlar, Autodesk, CAD, CADKEY, CAE, CAM, CAx, Intergraph, MSC Software, NX, SDRC, SolidWorks, think3, Unigraphics 3 Responses to “MCAD Mystery: Whatever Happened To . . . ?” |
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Regarding the “A Short History of CAD” video: Nice project video, but it shows how many different views of history there are. No mention of CALMA (even though it was owned by GE) but mention of CINEMA, Canvas, and Sprite (which I stopped drinking a long time ago :)), all 3 of which I’ve never heard of, despite being a very close neighbor to CAD in my 40-year CAE career.
Also, speaking of CALMA, whatever happened to Bob Bender?
I would also be curious to know what became of Autodesk founder Al Green…
Call me biased since I worked on Parasolid development for well over a decade but given the pivotal position of Parasolid within the solid modeller history I thought it was somewhat breezed over, no mention of Romulus or the work done in Cambridge UK – there were some monumental “firsts” achieved there but nothing was said about that.
I also agree with comments someone else made about Cinema Canvas and Sprite if space was left on the video there was a lot more that could have been said about the history of serious modellers rather than artistic/film/render type packages. I suppose CA-Design can be stretched to include just about anything but I prefer to reserve the term for serious 2D and 3D modellers as used in the engineering field.
This was not really the history of CAD as I remember it and I was there working one the code.