New Solutions Deliver Customer-driven Functionality to Increase Productivity,
                          Performance, and Accuracy

SAN RAFAEL, Calif., Nov. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Incorporating the requests of thousands of customers, Autodesk, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADSK), the world's leading design software and digital content company, today announced its next generation of manufacturing software solutions and services, giving manufacturing companies the most comprehensive combination of 2D and 3D design and data management solutions on the market today. These solutions include:

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    -- Autodesk Inventor(R) Series 8 software, now with built-in Autodesk(R)
       Vault design data management;
    -- Autodesk Inventor(R) Professional 8 software -- also featuring built-in
       Autodesk(R) Vault functionality;
    -- AutoCAD(R) Mechanical 2004 DX software with exclusive Autodesk Inventor
       software interoperability; and
    -- Autodesk Streamline(R) 5.3 collaboration service.

Autodesk also recently introduced AutoCAD(R) Electrical 2004, a new AutoCAD-based product optimized for electrical controls design and engineering, which interoperates with Autodesk Inventor Professional software. These new solutions underscore Autodesk's strategy to help customers create, manage, and share their digital design data and solve critical business challenges. Autodesk gives them the tools to innovate, increase productivity, simplify processes, improve quality, and accelerate time to market for less cost. With six million Autodesk users worldwide, Autodesk's 2D and 3D design solutions and its customers' digital design data are found in organizations everywhere.

"I don't know many companies that give users an opportunity to step in, use the software, and have input before it's released," said Dee Harris of Sulzer Pumps, an international pump manufacturer. "As an Autodesk customer, we're helping in decisions related to Autodesk Inventor and Autodesk Inventor Professional. To be able to share some of our input and ideas is really important."

Autodesk Inventor Series 8, the world's #1 selling 3D mechanical design solution and the only solution that unites the power of 2D and 3D in one box, is a customer-designed release focused on making customers more productive with outstanding performance, stability, and value. Autodesk Inventor 8 software's user-requested features include powerful new capabilities that increase the performance of certain tasks such as drawing view creation as much as two to eight times faster and drawing annotations as much as 20 to 30 times faster, according to independent benchmark tests performed by Cyon Research (complete study available at http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=3647049 ). By incorporating built-in data management with the fully integrated Autodesk Vault functionality, Autodesk Inventor Series 8 dramatically improves engineering productivity and accelerates development cycles. It improves engineering productivity by decreasing search time and offering better organization of data to reduce errors and rework. It accelerates development cycles by synchronizing workgroup efforts of individual designers and ensuring that the proper versions are being used. Further, Autodesk Vault eliminates complex deployments and the need for extensive IT support because it is simple to install and its intuitive interface provides immediate efficiency. Autodesk Inventor and Autodesk Inventor Professional users can now publish 2D Autodesk Inventor design data using the Design Web Format (DWF), an open file format for distributing rich design data and enhancing collaboration. In addition, to enhance collaboration, native Autodesk Inventor 8 file viewing can be performed with Volo(R) View technology.

"With Autodesk Inventor Series 8, I'm excited about the improvement in speed and being able to manage drawings with the integrated Autodesk Vault functionality," added Sulzer's Dee Harris.

With this release, Autodesk continues to enhance its own 3D geometric modeling kernel, the Autodesk(R) ShapeManager, delivering advanced robustness, geometry coverage, and performance to its manufacturing customers who are under tremendous pressure to bring higher quality products to market faster for less cost. Bringing new capabilities to Autodesk Inventor users, significant features of the kernel were enhanced including the Loft enhancements that allow customers to create smoother and more complex surfaces, the 3D Spline to let users create more complex shapes and paths, and the Face Draft to create additional complex draft conditions.

Autodesk Inventor Professional 8, a superset of Autodesk Inventor Series, expands beyond the tube and pipe functionality offered in Autodesk Inventor Professional 7 to include cable and wire harness capabilities. Autodesk Inventor Professional software is the ideal choice for organizations that need a simple-to-implement and affordable solution for advanced design of machinery. Today, these organizations must either buy and integrate several niche applications or purchase expensive solutions from suppliers. Autodesk Inventor Professional software delivers a single, integrated, simple-to-deploy solution that offers a breadth of functionality at a tremendous value.

AutoCAD Mechanical 2004 DX is the best solution for 2D mechanical design and documentation with seamless Autodesk Inventor interoperability. Intelligent linking automatically notifies users of changes and enables updating of views and annotations to keep drawings current. AutoCAD Mechanical 2004 DX is for engineers, designers, and detailers who are not ready to move to 3D but who want to dramatically decrease the time to create and change 2D production designs or who need to access or document 3D model data. The new software helps users create better mechanical designs and associatively interoperate with 3D models. AutoCAD Mechanical 2004 DX helps manufacturers to reduce costs, accelerate time to market, and improve communication with the supply chain.

Autodesk Streamline 5.3, the latest version of Autodesk's online collaboration service for users of Autodesk Manufacturing solutions, now offers integration with the Autodesk Vault, globalization for non-English speaking users, and customer-driven enhancements including Autodesk Inventor fidelity and offline viewer improvements to increase accuracy and productivity. By providing an easy-to-use, easy-to-install solution with secure access -- anytime and anywhere -- Autodesk Streamline allows manufacturing supply chain team members to share digital design and business data instantly, helping to reduce costs and simplify business processes.

AutoCAD Electrical 2004 helps electrical engineers, designers, and detailers create better electrical designs, reduce costs, and accelerate time to market for their products. It provides extensive electrical controls design functionality as part of the industry's most comprehensive 2D and 3D design solutions for the manufacturing marketplace. It is built on the AutoCAD 2004 foundation to maintain full, native DWG format compatibility. Wire data reports created in AutoCAD Electrical can be leveraged directly by the cable and wire harness functionality in Autodesk Inventor Professional software to further accelerate and simplify the design process. This product is currently available only in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Latin America.

The best way to license these new solutions is through Autodesk(R) Subscription. For an annual fee, Autodesk Subscription customers benefit from a complete technology, training, and support program that protects their software investments by providing them with the most current design technology, web support direct from Autodesk, flexible self-paced training options, and a broad range of other technology and business benefits. For products like Autodesk Inventor, the program provides a timely cycle of new releases with rich new content as soon as it becomes available. For more information about Autodesk Subscription, visit www.autodesk.com/subscription. For more information on Autodesk Manufacturing Solutions, please visit www.autodesk.com/manufacturing or call 1-800-964-6432.

About Autodesk

Autodesk is the world's leading design software and digital content company, offering customers progressive business solutions through powerful technology products and services. Autodesk helps customers in the building, manufacturing, infrastructure, digital media, and wireless data services fields increase the value of their digital design data and improve efficiencies across their entire project lifecycle management processes. For more information about the company, see www.autodesk.com.

NOTE: Autodesk, AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, Volo, and Autodesk Streamline are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

Contact: Cindi Goodsell, 415-507-8452

EMAIL: cindi.goodsell@autodesk.com

SOURCE  Autodesk, Inc.
    -0-                             11/21/2003
    /CONTACT:  Cindi Goodsell of Autodesk, Inc., +1-415-507-8452, or
cindi.goodsell@autodesk.com/
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    (ADSK)

CO:  Autodesk, Inc.
ST:  California
IN:  CPR STW MLM
SU:  PDT



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