A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

What is the oldest CAD / PLM software in use today?

What is the oldest CAD / PLM software in use today?
Oleg
Oleg
25 August, 2015 | 2 min for reading

ibm-computer-graphic-matrix-printer

The technology around us is changing very fast. Even if you are 17 year old, you can already find your first computer equipment or electronic toy in a museum. Last weekend, I had a chance to visit Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. If you are checking around San Francisco and Silicon Valley, try to get there. There are some great pieces of electronic equipment there such as fully functioned  DEC PDP-1 from DEC Restoration Project or Honeywell 316 Kitchen computer from 1965 that was never sold to anybody.

Usually we are concerned about the speed of technology adoption. But, visiting CHM made me think about about an opposite side of technology adoption – computers and hardware that are still in use. Engineering and manufacturing industry is one of those industry that is using technologies and products for a long period of time. There are multiple reasons for that – manufacturing programs with very long lifecycle, product that requires maintenance usually requiring to keep using the same or compatible software, some regulation requirements and others.

Among many articles about history of CAD, PDM and PLM software, my favorite is David Weisberg’s The Engineering Design Revolution. If you never seen that, take it as a weekend reading, I’m sure you will have fun. I captured few interesting examples of engineering software related equipment in Computer History Museum. The work of Ivan Sutherland at MIT is well represented there. But, I never seen the following example of mapping of Sutherland’s Volkswagen in Ca 1977.

Sutherlands-volkswagen-ca-1977

Gerber Scientific plotter advertising from 1965 as part of mini-computer promotion (btw, with attractive price of $28,500)

Gerber-scientific-plotter

Summagraphics tablet from 1980 with AutoCAD menu and samples of AutoCAD software from 1984.

Autocad-tablet-chm

What is my conclusion? The life of software sometimes is longer that we think. Still, I believe, there are few pieces of software running written in COBOL and FORTRAN. It made me think about some old CAD and PLM software that is probably still in use in some companies. And maybe there are are few CAD, PDM and PLM systems that running for 15-20 years without changes? It would be interesting to learn about these examples. If you know some of these, please share in comments.

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
15 December, 2018

Fundamentally new technologies don’t become productive until a generation after their introduction. The time it takes people to learn how...

9 July, 2009

The following press release two days ago drove my attention. Kalypso, the world’s premier innovation consulting firm, announces the launch...

13 November, 2021

For the last two decades, PLM was developed in the well-established business strategy, product, and technology discipline. A lot can...

27 July, 2011

No files any more. Period. I hope I’ve got your attention. File system is one of the most stable paradigms...

14 February, 2011

Apple is trending these days. Not surprising me. At the same time, I don’t want to make this post a...

19 September, 2013

GitHub is a well known social network for programmers. According to Wikipedia article, GitHub is a web-based hosting service for...

25 September, 2009

The term “management” is very misused, in my view. Long time ago, somebody told me – if you don’t know...

11 June, 2012

PLM is not for small companies. It was a typical statement popular 10 years ago. Smaller manufacturing company is a...

29 October, 2013

How to select PLM? Manufacturing companies, industry pundits and vendors are trying to simplify this process. Nevertheless, after almost three...

Blogroll

To the top