Autodesk AutoCAD software

AutoCad (AutoCAD) is a CAD (Computer Aided Design or Computer Aided Drafting) software application. It is meant for 2D and 3D design and drafting. This software is developed and sold by Autodesk, Inc. In December 1982, AutoCad was first released. It is amongst one of the first CAD programs to run on personal computers. The level of localization varies from full translation of the product to documentation only. The AutoCAD command set is restricted as a part of the software localization. More about Autodesk AutoCad software is elaborated in the following account.

Origin of Auotodesk AutoCad Software

AutoCad was derived from a program known as Interact. The program was written in a proprietary language (SPL) and ran on the Marinchip Systems 9900 computer. Autodesk co-founders John Walker and Dan Drake owned Marinchip. Marinchip was later renamed as Autodesk.

Marinchip Software Partners decided to re-code Interact in C and PL/1 - C, as it appeared to be the major upcoming language and PL/1. In the end, the PL/1 version was futile. At the time, the C version was amongst the most compound programs in that language till date. Autodesk even had to work with the compiler developer (Lattice) to fix some limitations to get AutoCAD to run.

AutoCad LT

AutoCad LT is a lower cost version of AutoCad. It was first released in November 1993. AutoCad LT became the first product in the company's history priced below $1000 to bear the name ‘AutoCad’. Apart from being sold by Autodesk, you can also buy it at computer stores. AutoCAD LT was developed by Autodesk so that they would have an entry-level CAD package to contend in the lower price level. The AutoCad LT MSRP has increased to $1200 as of the 2011 release.

Presently there are a few differences in the features of software. They are

• Management and automation potential with Sheet Set Manager and Action Recorder


• Customization-AutoCad LT doesn’t support customization with ARX, LISP and VBA


• 3D Capabilities- AutoCad LT lacks the capability to produce, visualize and render 3D models and 3D printing.


• CAD standards management tools


• Network Licensing- AutoCad LT can’t be used on multiple machines over a network.

AutoCad and AutoCad LT are available for English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Danish, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Russian, Vietnamese, Polish, Swedish, Czech, Hungarian, Dutch, Finnish and Norwegian.

AutoCad Freestyle

AutoCad Freestyle is built on the AutoCad platform. It is a simplified and cheap application that makes it effortless to create precise, professional-looking 2D drawings and sketches.

AutoCAD is licensed at an important discount over commercial retail price to qualifying students and teachers, with a 3 year’s license. AutoCad’s native file format, DWG and to a minor extent, its interchange file format, DXF, are recognized as de facto standards for CAD data interoperability. In latest years AutoCAD has included support for DWF. It is a format developed and promoted by Autodesk for publishing CAD data. In the past, Autodesk AutoCad software has estimated the overall number of DWG files in existence to be over three billion.