Lift Manufacturer is First European Winner for Its Forward-Looking Design
                                   Strategy

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., June 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Autodesk, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADSK) today announced that Stannah Lifts, part of the Stannah Group, the UK's largest independent manufacturer of passenger and vertical platform lifts, has been named as the Autodesk Inventor of the Month for June 2006. This program recognizes the most innovative design and engineering advancements made by the extensive community of customers using Autodesk Inventor software, the world's best-selling 3D mechanical design software and best choice for 3D design.

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For more than 140 years, Stannah Lifts, a British-owned, family-run operation, has been recognized as a leader in innovation, design and technical excellence for its stair lifts, and passenger and platform lifts. The company recently integrated its CAD system with its enterprise and operation applications, quadrupling production of one of its most popular platform lifts. Autodesk Inventor software is at the heart of this strategy. The platform lifts are typically used for transporting people in wheelchairs up flights of stairs in department stores and other large buildings.

The design process begins at the point of sale, as Autodesk Inventor is used to quickly create the dimensions, tailored to each customer's building specifications. Stannah chose the industry-leading 3D mechanical design software to amplify its design process alongside its 2D software. The company's work became quicker and more accurate after deploying Autodesk Inventor. Additionally, the design data from Autodesk Inventor feeds directly into the company's machinery systems, which was previously a manual process.

"We're moving towards fully automating our design and manufacturing processes, thanks to Autodesk Inventor," says Martin Lee, CAD development engineer, Stannah. "Previously we could only design and produce one or two platform lifts per week, but now we produce four times as many. When we decided to expand our design processes we looked at everything on the market, including Pro/ENGINEER, SolidWorks and Solid Edge. Autodesk Inventor offered greater functionality, so we made the best choice."

To reap the benefits of centralized project management and release management automation, Stannah is implementing Autodesk Productstream software. Seamlessly integrated with Autodesk Inventor, Productstream enables Stannah to organize engineering data in a centralized location for complete control over their content. "We plan to use Productstream to automate and manage engineering change orders (ECOs) and our bill of materials, linking them straight into our ERP system, eliminating even more time-consuming, error-prone manual processes," says Lee.

"While there will always be a place for individually designed productions, there is no doubt that configuring certain products at the very beginning of the process can bring great benefits in speed, accuracy and cost savings. When this data is then re-used further downstream right through to the production process and beyond, you have the blueprint for a sophisticated and highly competitive operation. For this reason Autodesk is pleased to name Stannah Lifts as Inventor of the Month," said Robert "Buzz" Kross, vice president of Autodesk's Manufacturing Solutions Division.

Each month, Autodesk selects an Inventor of the Month from the more than 500,000 worldwide users of Autodesk Inventor, its best-selling 3D mechanical design software. Winners are chosen for engineering excellence and ground breaking innovation. For more information on Autodesk Inventor of the Month, contact us at IOM@autodesk.com.

About Autodesk Inventor

Autodesk Inventor software is the best choice for 3D design. As the leading 3D mechanical design software, Autodesk Inventor delivers the manufacturing community a comprehensive, integrated set of tools for 3D design and documentation. For more information, visit: http://www.autodesk.com/bestchoice.

About Stannah

The Stannah Group is a British, family-owned company with members of the Stannah family still actively involved in the running of the business. With a manufacturing history spanning over 140 years, the Stannah name is synonymous with lifts. The product range comprises passenger lifts, stair lifts, platform lifts for wheelchairs and goods lifts for businesses. Stannah has produced stair lifts since 1975 and since then has manufactured over 250,000 which have been sold worldwide. Today, Stannah is the World's market-leader in stair lifts. All Stannah products are recognised by architects and specifiers for their quality, innovative design and technological expertise, backed-up by excellent customer service. For more information, visit: http://www.stannah.com

About Autodesk

Autodesk, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADSK) is a Fortune 1000 company, wholly focused on ensuring that great ideas are turned into reality. With seven million users, Autodesk is the world's leading software and services company for the building, manufacturing, infrastructure, digital media and wireless data services fields. Autodesk's solutions help customers create, manage and share their data and digital assets more effectively. As a result, customers turn ideas into competitive advantage by becoming more productive, streamlining project efficiency and maximizing profits.

Founded in 1982, Autodesk is headquartered in San Rafael, California. For additional information about Autodesk, please visit http://www.autodesk.com.

Autodesk, AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor and Productstream are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

Contact: Jeannie Hornung, 415-318-4118

Email: hornungj@fleishman.com

SOURCE Autodesk, Inc.
CONTACT:
Jeannie Hornung,
+1-415-318-4118,
hornungj@fleishman.com, for Autodesk.
Web site: http://www.autodesk.com
http://www.stannah.com
http://www.autodesk.com/bestchoice
(ADSK)