Autodesk Enters Burgeoning Consumer Home Design Market; Advanced Products Group Launches First in a Series of Home Design Software Products.

SAN RAFAEL, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 15, 1997--Continuing to execute on its "Design Your World" corporate theme, Autodesk today announced that it is expanding beyond its traditional market of commercial design professionals, and is entering the consumer design market.

The company today made available a new consumer product called Picture This Home! Kitchen, the first in a series of easy-to-use consumer home-remodeling software products from its Advanced Products Group. Autodesk, the world's leading supplier of PC design software and multimedia tools, is creating consumer software products to continue its ongoing mission of diversification and leadership of new design markets. The series will also include titles on baths, landscape and the entire home.

Picture This Home! Kitchen is an easy-to-learn, visually superior kitchen remodeling program that lets users visualize and plan their new kitchen down to the finest detail before investing time and money in materials. Unlike the cartoon-like renderings found in competitive home design products available today, Autodesk's innovative new technology in the Picture This Home! product line provides users with the unique ability to mix and match thousands of decorative products (such as paints, wallpapers and appliances) from more than 30 leading manufacturers using magazine-quality photographic images.

Ease of use was so important for Picture This Home! that Autodesk is the first software company to work with the Good Housekeeping Institute to test and evaluate the product. The product will feature the Good Housekeeping seal.

The home improvement market is growing rapidly. According to the National Association of Home Builders, by the year 2000, approximately $176 billion will be spent on home remodeling projects annually. According to the Kitchen and Bath Business and American Homestyle survey, in 1995, more than 4.5 million kitchens were remodeled in the United States, with spending on this estimated to be $27.5 billion. Because so much money is invested in remodels, home design programs, such as Picture This Home! Kitchen, allow these customers to completely visualize the completed project before serious amounts of time or money are invested.

"Launching a series of consumer design products is a natural for Autodesk," said Carol Bartz, Chairman and CEO of Autodesk, Inc. "We revolutionized the commercial design market 15 years ago and plan to do the same for the consumer design market."

The Advanced Products Group

Autodesk formed the Advanced Products Group (APG) in February of 1995 to pursue business opportunities adjacent to and outside of Autodesk's original markets of design and drafting professionals. APG products incorporate a unique combination of Autodesk's innovative technology and an easy-to-learn user interface. Picture This Home! utilizes Autodesk's design expertise in a way that is visually superior to competing products, setting a new standard for the consumer home design industry.

"We are leveraging our design expertise to benefit everyone now, not only professionals," said John Lynch, Vice President of Autodesk's Advanced Products Group. "Picture This Home! software makes it easier to plan a remodel and immediately see how actual brand-name decorative materials look in the design by using our powerful technology, which lets users make active display designs in high quality resolution images, comparable to photographs in a decorating magazine. No other products today can offer customers this level of detail and visual clarity."

Picture This Home! Kitchen

Picture This Home! features an innovative visualization technology called Autodesk PhotoEDIT. This technology lets consumers see brand name products in the product and apply them to a design, so they can completely visualize the finished project before any renovation begins. Covering all necessary aspects of a kitchen remodeling project, Picture This Home! Kitchen includes five fully integrated features: Decorate, 3D Space Plan, Shop, Budget, and Compare. Picture This Home! Kitchen can be found in the U.S. only at major software and home center retailers for an estimated retail street price of approximately $50.

The matters discussed in this news release contain forward looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These include the timely development and acceptance of the new products discussed, the impact of competitive products and pricing, and the other risks detailed from time to time in Autodesk's SEC reports, including the report of Form 10-Q filed in December 1996.

About Autodesk

Autodesk is the world's leading supplier of PC-based design software and PC multimedia tools. The company's 2D and 3D products, geographic information systems, and data management tools are used in many industries for mapping, architectural design, mechanical design, film and video production, video/game development and Web content development. Its Kinetix division is the leader in PC-based 3D modeling and animation software, providing a full range of products for digital media and design professionals. The fourth largest PC software company in the world, Autodesk has three million customers in nearly 130 countries.

For more information on Autodesk, call 415/507-5000, type GOADESK on CompuServe, or visit its World Wide Web site at http://www.autodesk.com . Kinetix can be reached by calling 800/879-4233 or through its World Wide Web site at http://www.ktx.com . Autodesk shares are traded on the NASDAQ National Market under the symbol ADSK. -0-

Note to Editors: Autodesk and the Autodesk logo are registered trademarks and Picture This Home! and Picture This Home! logos, Autodesk PhotoEDIT, and Suddenly Everything Clicks are trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders.

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