Navisworks, 20 years facilitating our lives
It seems that 2017 is a great year for anniversaries at Autodesk.
It seems like 2017 is a huge year for birthdays at Autodesk, earlier this year Autodesk celebrated its 35th birthday, Revit celebrated its 15 years’ anniversary since acquisition, and now Navisworks is celebrating a double header!
20 years ago, today, the first code was committed to the original commercial release of Navisworks in Sheffield in the UK; and 10 years ago, Autodesk completed its acquisition of NavisWorks Ltd.
Back then NavisWorks was primarily used as a viewer for large files rather than what it is today, but much of that technology and principles are also found in other tools you may use every day like AutoCAD, Revit and BIM 360.
Tim Wiegand, the brains behind NavisWorks, was working on these problems for three years before anything commercial was produced; as architect of the wider BIM 360 portfolio today he had this to say about the anniversary:
“Whenever I think about the impact Navisworks has had, I find it hard to
believe that it all started in the corner of a scruffy University research lab, and that at least some of the code I wrote then is still in the product somewhere.”
Peter Thompson, Managing Director of NavisWorks Ltd 10 years ago, and now Senior Director for Building and Product Design here at Autodesk, said:
“Everywhere I go, every customer interaction I have, any time I talk about workflow, (and without me volunteering that I used to work at the company) NavisWorks is mentioned as THE key product that makes a project work. Still, to this day.”
To celebrate these anniversaries, we’re announcing the first ever Design Night Sheffield! Part of a global movement of celebrating design and making in all its forms we’re really pleased to host this event at the beautiful Old Post Office in Sheffield, now the Sheffield Hallam University Institute of Arts on Tuesday October 24th 2017.
More information at http://beyonddesign.typepad.com/posts/2017/09/happy-20th-birthday-navisworks-announcing-the-launch-of-design-night-sheffield.html