Looking Back At Excitech’s Autodesk Training

I was thinking recently just how much has changed at Excitech since we first started delivering Autodesk Training Courses back in the 1980’s.

In those days, there were no laptops, no projection systems or big LCD screens. The trainer and a group of clients gathered around one of the client’s workstations – usually in the middle of a working office, which was far from ideal.

I recall turning up to my first training session, armed with a copy of the AutoCAD manual (the big one), a pad and a single A4 sheet of paper listing the topics I intended to cover during that session.I would simply turn up at a client site and share my knowledge.

Back then, things were a little easier for the Autodesk Training Centre; we pretty much just had AutoCAD and the Architectural add-on AEC to provide training on.

But even then, Autodesk were not standing still and soon started introducing more products to market which meant more products we needed to learn and provide training on. As well as AutoCAD, AutoCAD 3D and AutoLISP, there was AutoCAD AEC, AutoCAD AME (AutoCAD for engineers) and AutoShade (an early 3D rendering package) to get to grips with.

The course notes or training materials were created in-house by each training provider, so standards varied, but as the Autodesk Authorised Training Centre (ATC) network began to take shape, so did the standardisation of course material. I recall attending “training material focus groups” where syllabuses and the standardisation of training materials were discussed. As a result, Autodesk eventually started authoring their own unified range of courseware, for use in the ATC’s, and quality control began.

However, there was always the challenge of keeping these materials updated with each new release and getting them to market in time for the new product release.

Eventually, third party publishers such as Ascent and White Frog started producing Autodesk Training Materials. At the same time, various books started appearing on Amazon such as the excellent Civil 3D titles by Eric Chappell, which also provided excellent course materials. Indeed, training manual publication for the Autodesk Titles (Autodesk Official Courseware) has become an industry in its own right. This has been of massive benefit to ATC’s such as Excitech, as we simply could never create the variety and quantity of training course materials to support our 60 plus Autodesk Training Courses we offer.

Autodesk soon introduced an authorisation scheme for individual trainers, which then progressed to the Autodesk Certified Instructor (ACI) scheme. Today Autodesk police the standard of training closely, so that ATC’s as well as individual trainers can be de-authorised if quality targets, which are driven from the customer feedback, are not met.

Autodesk has driven the standards and professionalism of the ATC network, and this is seen as the reason for selecting an Autodesk Authorised Training Centre over a non-accredited training organisation.