San Rafael, California-based Autodesk Inc knows that it needs to diversify from its core personal computer design software business to remain healthy and continue to grow, and its latest venture is a CD-ROM database of standard parts so that designers can slot the things into their drawings instead of having to draw them from scratch. Autodesk has gone to 17 of the largest North American manufacturers of ready-made parts such as motors, power supplies, enclosures, to give it the basis for what it reckons is the world’s first single-source interactive CD-ROM database of their key product lines. The company reckons the disk will solve the time-wasting problem that information on parts or materials either does not exist in an electronic format or is available only from multiple, often dissimilar sources so that a typical designer must first manually search through 10 to 20 manufacturers’ catalogues to find the right parts and spend another 16 to 20 hours per month redrawing that part for the final product design. The series will be updated twice a year, and the first two disks are PartSpec, with over 200,000 parts, and MaterialSpec, 25,000 materials; they come in MS-DOS and Windows versions and they together cost an introductory $250 for a one-year subscription. Separately, Autodesk announced that it has retained IBM Corp’s Software Manufacturing Solutions to handle duplication and distribution of its personal computer software products in the US and some other places.
