No it didn't
It was initially developed to run on CPM and DOS for a few microcomputers of the time (the IBM-PC being the one that survived that era). There was a Unix version or two later, as well as a Mac Classic version, but it was the DOS version that was by far the most used and the other versions were eventually dropped.
I don't think it even required a DOS extender until release 9 or 10. Special video cards were also not required for a long time, though cards with special display list drivers were popular for increased performance.
It was after the first one or two Windows versions is when they started to go much more Windows specific in the design of the program. Up until then, the entire GUI was driven by scripting, macros and text based menu and dialog and even toolbar definition files. By about R13 or R14 they started hard coding more of the UI to be Windows specific, but I stopped using it not long after that so I don't know how far they went. I know they added support for stuff like VBA.
Edited by
altmann
April 16, 2010, 06:47:15 PM EDT
Re: AutoCAD used to be...
It was initially developed to run on CPM and DOS for a few microcomputers of the time (the IBM-PC being the one that survived that era). There was a Unix version or two later, as well as a Mac Classic version, but it was the DOS version that was by far the most used and the other versions were eventually dropped.
I don't think it even required a DOS extender until release 9 or 10. Special video cards were also not required for a long time, though cards with special display list drivers were popular for increased performance.
It was after the first one or two Windows versions is when they started to go much more Windows specific in the design of the program. Up until then, the entire GUI was driven by scripting, macros and text based menu and dialog and even toolbar definition files. By about R13 or R14 they started hard coding more of the UI to be Windows specific, but I stopped using it not long after that so I don't know how far they went. I know they added support for stuff like VBA.
