AutoCAD History Part I

I am sure many of you that are new to AutoCAD take many of the features of AutoCAD for granted, but those feature weren't always there. Just like things that will come in the future are here yet. If you know what I mean.

For example - some milestones that look pretty primitive right now:

Version 1.2 (Release 2)   April 1983                                                      

A Dimensioning facility added as an extra-cost option.

Yep - you had to pay extra to be able to dimension!

Version 1.3 (Release 3)   August 1983                                                  

Layer-to-layer move via CHANGE command added.

Before this you would have to erase and redraw in the correct layer

Version 1.4 (Release 4)   October 1983

ZOOM Previous added

But, you only got one!

Version 2.0 (Release 5)   October 1984                                        

Added dot/dash linetype capability (LINETYPE, LTSCALE, and LAYER Ltype commands).

Layers extended to have user-chosen names, with no limit to the number of layers in a drawing.

Version 2.5 (Release 7)   June 1986

Setting of color and linetype per entity, independent of the entity's layer added.

This seems like it you couldn't live without it, now

Version  2.6 (Release 8)   April 1987                                       

The ZOOM, PAN, VIEW, and REDRAW commands allowed to be used transparently.

Before this you have to end a command to Zoom - think about that for a moment.

Release 9   September 1987

The MULTIPLE command modifier  added.

The new DDATTE command added to permit Attribute editing to be done using a dialog box.

Crossing object selection boxes drawn as dotted lines.

This was the first release to use dialog boxes! But they were clunky DOS ones. Windows was not yet out.

Release  10    October 1988

This was the first release to use a 386 computer

Release 11    October 1990

Release 11 was crappy

More tomorrow!