I sort of started my employment with Autodesk by moving to California in 1990 to work for Ithaca Software. Ithaca Software was in the process of relocating from Ithaca, New York. Ithaca Software was acquired by Autodesk in 1993, and when Ithaca Software co-founder, Carl Bass, became Autodesk CEO in 2006, Ithaca Software's acquisition of Autodesk was complete. While working at Ithaca Software, I developed 2D and 3D graphics drivers for the DOS and HP-UX platforms in addition to being the author of the reference manual. For those unfamiliar, HOOPS stands for Hierarchical Object-Oriented Picture System. HOOPS is a platform-independent graphics system that allows a programmer to write one program and have the graphics work on a variety of operating systems like Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc. HOOPS handles all of the complexity of different graphics systems and devices on behalf of the programmer. Who is old enough to remember the SGI Iris Vision graphics card?

When Autodesk acquired Ithaca Software, Carl Bass was very egalitarian. He made sure that employees, original Ithaca Software investors, and existing HOOPS customers emerged from the deal intact. For example, he got Tech Soft 3D to continue to develop and support HOOPS for customers (even Autodesk competitors) who relied on it. So here we are 25 years later, and here's where I will be tomorrow.

I look forward to seeing how Tech Soft 3D has improved our baby.

Graphics are alive in the lab.