News

New e-book on the many paths and investments in the development of modern-day CAD

Buyers, sellers, innovators, and old-timers.

Jon Peddie & Kathleen Maher

Jon Peddie Research has just released a 43-page e-book that traces the origins of the CAD industry to the present. Of the nine original CAD companies, only Dassault is still in the market. All the others have been sold, merged, or shut down. New companies kept entering the field, and some still exist, while the others were acquired or just gave up. Today, there are seven major CAD companies and a dozen minor ones, including those with free CAD offerings.

CAD was developed for automobile and airplane companies, with General Electric being the premier developer in 1967. The automotive companies were the early adopters and adapted the design tools for proprietary advantages, so they didn’t talk about the software tools until many years later.

The foundation for computer graphics, CAD, sat at the base of all the visual effects in movies and computer games. Today, the dimensioning of imaginary landscapes, spaceships, and buildings is called modeling—however, it is just CAD.

CAD is used to design our skyscrapers, lawns, cars, and every product in our homes and offices. All the wiring in airplanes, trains, and rocket ships is designed in CAD. CAD makes things traceable and reproducible. And AI is enhancing this geometry-based ubiquitous design tool.

The new e-book on the many paths and investments in the development of modern-day CAD tells how and who got us here. A few products are mentioned for their historical significance, but this is not a product guide, and no single company is featured. The e-book was not sponsored by any CAD company and is the product of the authors’s years of experience in the field, and is associated with Jon Peddie Research’s World Wide CAD Report.

You can download the e-book from here: The many paths and investments in the development of modern-day CAD .

About Jon Peddie Research

Jon Peddie Research has been active in the graphics and multimedia fields for more than 30 years. JPR is a technically oriented multimedia and graphics research and consulting firm. Based in Tiburon, California, JPR provides consulting, research, and other specialized services to technology companies in various fields, including graphics development, multimedia for professional applications and consumer electronics, high-end computing, and Internet-access product development. JPR’s Market Watch is a quarterly report focused on PC graphics controllers’s market activity for notebook and desktop computing.

Company Contact:
Jon Peddie, Jon Peddie Research
(415) 435-9368
[email protected]

Robert Dow, Jon Peddie Research
(415) 407-0757
[email protected]

Media Contact
Carol Warren, Creor Group
(714) 890-4500
[email protected]

Game development, simplified