Autodesk OEM Program Attracts New Partners and Reaches New Markets; Low Cost, Focused Applications Propel OEM Momentum

Business Wire, Feb 20, 1996

SAN RAFAEL, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 20, 1996--In only its first year, Autodesk's OEM Technology Licensing Program has received commitments from developers in Autodesk's virtual corporation to deliver eight to ten new applications each quarter, in over a dozen vertical markets, that are powered with Autodesk technology. There are now 30 developers in the AutoCAD OEM Program worldwide.

Organizations that have embraced Autodesk's OEM technology have been AutoCAD(R) third party developers looking to deliver low cost, application specific products; companies with enterprise-wide solutions looking to replace their homegrown CAD engines with AutoCAD; and organizations building new applications for internal use. These third-party applications are attractive to new customers and are finding new markets where AutoCAD has not traditionally been a viable solution.

OEM Program Creates New Markets for Developers

One company that has embraced Autodesk's OEM Program is Eagle Point Software in Dubuque, Iowa. Eagle Point, a developer of AEC and survey applications, has already built six products using Autodesk's OEM technology: ProSurveyor and ProSurveyor Plus for surveyors, Home Designer and Home Builder for residential builders and Site Designer and Irrigation Designer for landscape architects and irrigation designers.

Bill LeMay, chief technical officer for Eagle Point Software, said, "Autodesk's OEM platform lets us use pieces of our existing AutoCAD-based codestreams to create application specific products for new market segments. We can also sell these products as "light" companion applications for our existing AutoCAD-based product line. Applications powered with Autodesk technology let users share data with other AutoCAD users in the design process. This compatibility is important in today's world."

Clark Musgrove, president of CADKIT in Denver, Colorado, said, the Autodesk OEM program has dramatically helped his business grow. "Sales have skyrocketed since we starting building applications with Autodesk's OEM engine," Musgrove said. The program has outperformed all expectations. We doubled the business we expected to do and we expect CADKIT's sales to double again in 1996. CADKIT develops and sells kitchen and bath design and cost/estimate applications.

Another company that has successfully embedded AutoCAD's OEM engine into design systems is Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Japan's largest electric consumer product company. It adopted AutoCAD's OEM engine and has developed two systems that support home design. They are the Reform Estimation System and 3D Presentation System. These systems let users easily design houses just by picking and placing housing components, such as doors and windows. They also let users generate cost and price estimates and walk-through views in 3D.

Hozumi Yamada, manager of the operations development department, Corporate Housing Equipment sales division of Matsushita, said, "AutoCAD has the best performance design software running in a Windows environment. Because AutoCAD is the de facto standard with an installed base of more than 1.3 million users, we had total confidence licensing AutoCAD OEM."

Glen Vondrick, director of the Autodesk OEM program, said, "The OEM technology program is letting Autodesk once again stake out a leadership position in the design market by setting new standards for openness, flexibility, and versatility. Autodesk's OEM program provides additional opportunity to members of Autodesk's virtual corporation to grow their business in new, previously unexplored market niches."

AutoCAD OEM

AutoCAD OEM lets software developers embed a component version of AutoCAD into their applications easily and inexpensively, creating high-volume vertical market applications. AutoCAD OEM is a development environment specifically designed to work within market-specific applications that support all current AutoCAD Application Programming Interfaces through Release 12. It is not a general-purpose design product, such as AutoCAD or AutoCAD(R) LT. AutoCAD OEM is 100 percent compatible with AutoCAD standards.

An OEM engine based on the latest release of AutoCAD Release 13 will be available later this year.

To date, the range of applications that have been built on AutoCAD OEM include:

Electrical Simulation Open office systems layout Kitchen and Bath remodeling Residential Framing Electronic estimation support systems Surveying Landscaping Furniture manufacturing Plant Piping and operation Physical and logical network management Telco Environmental Cleanup and management systems Geographic spatial query systems Field Electric Utilities systems Structural simulation and analysis

Availability

Autodesk OEM Component Technologies are available to software developers selected for membership in Autodesk's OEM Program. Applications that embed one or more Autodesk OEM component technologies will be sold by the OEM as a single, shrink-wrapped package. For more information on Autodesk OEM Program call 415/507-6431, or send e-mail to oem_info@autodesk.com or visit the World Wide Web site at http://www.autodesk.com