Students Experience the World of 1990s 3D CAD

1998 was a great year for technology. Apple launched the iMac, the first MP3 player hit store shelves, Game Boy was offered in color and a little-known search engine named Google hit the World Wide Web. Luckily gas was $1.06 per gallon in the United States, so at least you had a chance at affording some of these amazing new devices.

That brings us to SOLIDWORKS in the 1990s. Yup, Pokémon was there, and so were we. The revolutionary idea fueling the company was our mission to deliver powerful 3D CAD to every engineer’s desktop at an affordable price. By enabling users to access 3D CAD on a Windows® machine, SOLIDWORKS essentially knocked the price down from $40,000 to $4,000, marking the beginning of the democratization of 3D CAD.

What better way to celebrate bringing affordable 3D CAD to the masses than giving five intrepid students, who only recently reached voting age, a chance at experiencing the CAD of the 90s? Watch the video to see their reaction to SOLIDWORKS demos, marketing materials and, ultimately, a SOLIDWORKS 98Plus test drive.

The desire to bring the best design and engineering tools to every workstation still drives SOLIDWORKS today. This begins by listening to the most passionate community of CAD users and including its feedback in each product release for the last three decades. SOLIDWORKS 2017 contains more than 200 new, user-driven enhancements waiting for you to explore. See what’s new in SOLIDWORKS 2017 today at solidworks.com/launch.