This is a list of computer-aided technologies (CAx) companies and their software products. Software using computer-aided technologies (CAx) has been produced since the 1970s for a variety of

computer platform A computing platform or digital platform is an environment in which a piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the operating system (OS), even a web browser and associated application programming interfaces, or other underlying s ...

s. This software may include applications for

computer-aided design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...

(CAD),

computer-aided engineering Computer-aided engineering (CAE) is the broad usage of computer software to aid in engineering analysis tasks. It includes , , , durability and optimization. It is included with computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) ...

(CAE),

computer-aided manufacturing Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) also known as computer-aided modeling or computer-aided machining is the use of software to control machine tools in the manufacturing of work pieces. This is not the only definition for CAM, but it is the most ...

(CAM) and

product data management Product data management (PDM) should not be confused with product information management (PIM). PDM is the name of a business function within product lifecycle management (PLM) that is denotes the management and publication of product data. In sof ...

(PDM). The list is far from complete or representative as the CAD business landscape is very dynamic: almost every month new companies appear, old companies go out of business, companies split and merge. Sometimes some names disappear and reappear again.

CAx software companies

Past CAD Brands

Acquired, orphaned, failed or rebranded. ;Alias:Acquired by

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartere ...

;

Applicon Applicon, Incorporated was one of the first manufacturers of Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) systems. It was co-founded in 1969 in Bedford, Massachusetts by four founders working at the MIT Lincoln Lab: Fontaine Richardson who ...

:Acquired by UGS Corporation ;

CADAM CADAM (computer-augmented design and manufacturing) is CAD-related software that was developed by Lockheed. CADAM was originally written for IBM mainframes and later ported to UNIX workstations, including the IBM RT PC. A variant of CADAM cal ...

:Acquired by

Dassault Systèmes Dassault Systèmes SE () (abbreviated 3DS) is a French software corporation which develops software for 3D product design, simulation, manufacturing and other 3D related products. Founded in 1981, it is headquartered in Vélizy-Villacoublay, F ...

; CADCentre:Rebranded as Aveva ;Baystate Technologies:Acquired by Kubotek Corporation ;BARCO NV:Now called Ucamco for

printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a laminated sandwich str ...

applications ;Camsco:Acquired by Gerber ;CIS (Cambridge Interactive Systems):Acquired by Computervision ;

CADKEY CADKEY is a 2D/3D mechanical CAD (computer aided design or computer aided drafting) software application released for various DOS, Solaris, and Microsoft Windows operating systems. Originally released for DOS in 1984, CADKEY was among the first CA ...

:Acquired by Baystate Technologies ; Calma:Acquired by Computervision ;

Claris Claris International Inc., formerly FileMaker Inc., is a computer software development company formed as a subsidiary company of Apple Inc., Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several program ...

:Published "ClarisCAD", abandoned in transition of company to FileMaker ;

Computervision Computervision, Inc. (CV) was an early pioneer in Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/ CAM). Computervision was founded in 1969 by Marty Allen and Philippe Villers, and headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, United States. Its early ...

:Acquired by

Parametric Technology Corporation PTC Inc. (formerly Parametric Technology Corporation) is an American computer software and services company founded in 1985 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The global technology company has over 6,000 employees across 80 offices in ...

;Diehl Graphsoft:Acquired by

Nemetschek Nemetschek Group is a vendor of software for architects, engineers and the construction industry. The company develops and distributes software for planning, designing, building and managing buildings and real estate, as well as for media and ent ...

;Investronica:Acquired by Lectra ;Matra DataVision:Acquired by

;Microdynamics: Acquired by Gerber ; Micro Engineering Solutions:Published "Solution 3000" and "ADX", acquired by

;NC Graphics:Acquired by

;Revit Technology Corporation:Acquired by Autodesk ; Shape Data:Acquired by

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', ''E ...

;Spatial Corp.:Acquired by

;

SDRC SDRC (''Structural Dynamics Research Corporation'') is a leading company specializing in MCAE (Mechanical Computer Aided Engineering) and PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) software. History SDRC was formed by engineers, led by then associate pr ...

:Acquired by UGS Corporation ;SRAC: (Structural Research and Analysis Corporation) acquired by SolidWorks Corporation ;

SolidWorks Corporation SolidWorks is a solid modeling computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) application published by Dassault Systèmes. According to the publisher, over two million engineers and designers at more than 165,000 companies w ...

:Acquired by

;SDRC-IDEAS: Acquired by Unigraphics Solutions ;Unigraphics Solutions a.k.a. UGS Corporation:Acquired by

In-house CAD software

Developed by companies for their own use. Some are no longer used as the organizations are now using commercial systems.

Open source CAD software projects

2D

*SagCAD Open source 2D CAD program. Maintained on

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

. *PythonCAD Open source 2D CAD in Python on SourceForge. *JCAD Open source 2D CAD in Java. Maintained on SourceForge. *RibbonSoft

QCAD QCAD is a computer-aided design (CAD) software application for 2D design and drafting. It is available for Linux, Apple macOS, Unix and Microsoft Windows. The QCAD GUI is based on the Qt framework. QCAD is partly released under the GNU Genera ...

Archimedes Archimedes of Syracuse (;; ) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientis ...

Architectural CAD program. * LibreCAD Open source 2D CAD Program.

3D

*avoCADo Open source 3D CAD program in Java. Maintained on

. Last updated on 2013-04-26. * BRL-CAD * FreeCAD a general purpose 3D CAD modeler, implementing

Open CASCADE Open Cascade is an Information Technology Company of Capgemini,. Open Cascade provides services in the domain of scientific and technical computing and simulation tools. Open Cascade is primarily known to public for its Open Source platforms the ...

. * OpenSCAD *Wildcat CAD Open source 3D solid modeler and CAD application. Not to be confused with Wildcat! BBS. Last updated in 2008. *IRIT A solid modeling environment that allows one to model basic, primitive based models using Boolean operations as well as freeform surface's based models. **GuIrit A graphical user interface for IRIT *SvLis The Set-theoretic Kernel Geometric Modeller. A CSG modeller written in the C++ language and accessed through a call interface.

Open CASCADE and related projects

an SDK for 3D CAD, CAM, and CAE. * HeeksCAD a CAD application written by Dan Heeks. The solid modelling is provided by Open_CASCADE. Maintained on

Google Code Google Developers (previously Google Code) , application programming interfaces (APIs), and technical resources. The site contains documentation on using Google developer tools and APIs—including discussion groups and blogs for developers usin ...

. **HeeksCNC an add-on for HeeksCAD. Maintained on Google Code. *lignumCAD a tool for designing furniture, based on

and Qt. Maintained on SourceForge. *NaroCAD a parametric modeling CAD application. *PythonOCC Python wrappers for

. * FreeCAD an open source CAD/CAE, based on

, Qt and Python. *SolidModeller a parametric solid modeller. Includes a constraint based parametric sketcher. Maintained on SourceForge. *CADMAI a commercial CAD framework, based on

, which can either be used as a standalone CAD application or as an integration module for 3rd party applications or SOA environments. *

Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender container with a rotating me ...

is a professional,

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

3D computer graphics software 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for th ...

toolset used for creating

animated films Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...

visual effects Visual effects (sometimes abbreviated VFX) is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live-action footage and other live-action foota ...

, art,

3D printed 3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer co ...

models, interactive 3D applications and

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedba ...

PLM

*OpenPLM PLM framework based on

Python (programming language) Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. Python is dynamically-typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming p ...

Django (web framework) Django ( ; sometimes stylized as django) is a free and open-source, Python-based web framework that follows the model–template–views (MTV) architectural pattern. It is maintained by the Django Software Foundation (DSF), an independent o ...

Xapian Xapian is a free and open-source probabilistic information retrieval library, released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It is a full-text search engine library for programmers. It is written in C++, with bindings to allow use from P ...

Graphviz Graphviz (short for ''Graph Visualization Software'') is a package of open-source tools initiated by AT&T Labs Research for drawing graphs specified in DOT language scripts having the file name extension "gv". It also provides libraries for ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:List Of Cax Companies *CAD companies, List of CAx companies Computer-aided manufacturing software CAx

CAx software companies

Past CAD Brands

In-house CAD software

Open source CAD software projects

2D

3D

Open CASCADE and related projects

PLM

See also

References