Autodesk and AutoCAD was created 35 years ago this year. There are many celebrations looking back over the years, and also looking forward to the future. Autodesk was founded by John Walker, so I emailed with John on his perspective for the 35 years and asked him some questions to share.
Photo of John Walker when I met him at his home in Switzerland 10 years ago.
Shaan (me): What was your favorite AutoCAD Feature or command back in the early versions, and why?
John Walker:
I’d say it was a tie between block insertion with scaling and rotation and cross-hatching. The block feature was superb for demos (such as the office and subdivision drawings we showed at COMDEX 1982), and the cross-hatching feature, although it was very easy to implement, impressed people since it showed how the computer could automate tedious drawing tasks. I have always been fond of BLIPMODE, since it did so little (it allowed you to turn the little blips made when you selected a point on the screen on and…