After discontinuing the sale of perpetual licenses in January 2016, commercial versions of AutoCAD are licensed through a term-based subscription.īefore AutoCAD was introduced, most commercial CAD programs ran on mainframe computers or minicomputers, with each CAD operator (user) working at a separate graphics terminal. Initially a DOS application, subsequent versions were later released for other platforms including Classic Mac OS (1989), Microsoft Windows (1993) and macOS (2010), along with companion web and mobile applications.ĪutoCAD is a general drafting and design application used in industry by architects, project managers, engineers, graphic designers, city planners and other professionals to prepare technical drawings. It was first released in December 1982 for the CP/M and IBM PC platforms as a desktop app running on microcomputers with internal graphics controllers. English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Czech, Polish and HungarianģD computer-aided design (CAD) software application developed by Autodesk.
