Why 1998?

In Khari Johnson's Business 2.0 article on 3D CAD, she used the date of 1998, and it got me wondering, "Why that particular year?"

(Recall that she had written, Companies like Dassault Systems were first to the stage, offering industrial-strength programs that were expensive (a single copy of Dassault's CATIA cost $19,000 in 1998) and hard to use.)

What is special about 1998? After all, the software had been around since 1982.

The article was about Autodesk's Inventor, which came out in 1999. I wonder if there was supposed to be a link between CATIA and Inventor, the two dates, and the difference in pricing. I've asked Business 2.0 about the reason 1998 was the chose year, and why they wouldn't have picked SolidWorks or Solid Edge or CADKEY as the point of comparison.

Comments

[Josh]

That article reads more like a Press Release. Let us know what b2.0 tells you.

[Gary Dary]

I remember this Year very Well. It was the year that AutoDesk bought out Softdesk for $93 million and placed enormous pressure on developers to give up developing for Acad.
Bye Bye Ketiv and other companies,
For sure this Year 1998 is a time mark in history.

It almost caused our demise when Adesk
cancelled all of our contracts but then again life goes on. We are here 10 years
later!

And what goes around comes around!

Regards Gary.