Autodesk has always had ways and means to keep users reinvesting in its draughting tool, whether they want to, or not. Letting a version of AutoCAD lapse into an ‘obit’ version meant there would be an additional fee to bring it up to date, and you might even completely lose the right to upgrade, having to acquire a whole new licence. If a customer still wanted updates and patches, they would have to upgrade. Incompatibility between different versions made it harder to work with clients.Īutodesk then introduced the concept of what became known as an ‘obit’ (as in obituary), which meant that Autodesk would drop support to a version older than three releases back. Changes to the DWG format, which happened when some core new features were added, gave an added incentive to upgrade. In that time, users would typically upgrade every other release and the company’s key marketing drive was about trying to get customers to upgrade with rafts of new features. Multiple floppy disks came in a substantial box, along with a dongle (software lock), an overlay for a digitizer tablet and a pile of user manuals.įrom 1988 to 2003, Autodesk was not hard-set on producing a yearly release, with some intervals being between one and three years. Buying a perpetual licence for several thousand pounds (or dollars) would give you your own copy of the lingua franca of the CAD world.

Historically speaking, purchasing products like AutoCAD was akin to joining a club. Subscription: customer value or corporate cash cow?

Autocad subscription price