Celebrating our 10th year as 4D Technologies, the developers of CADLearning, we wanted to share the story of our founder and how we got our start creating video training for Autodesk software.

1. The 4D Technologies Story
Celebrating our 10th year as 4D Technologies, the developers of CADLearning, we wanted to share the
story of our founder and how we got our start creating video training for Autodesk software.
Let’s set the scene: Our President and founder, Dan Dolan, was the owner of an Autodesk Authorized
Reseller that sold Autodesk software and provided training and support to assist customers. At that
time, they were offering phone support free of charge to stay competitive with other firms in their
industry. The support team came to Dan and said, “We’re getting killed.”
The Problem: The support team was spending countless hours on the phone answering common
questions about Autodesk design applications. “Clients are using our support lines as their classrooms.
We need to add staff or start charging for support to cover the costs.”
The Solution: The support team suggested offering a low-cost training solution that would help alleviate
the burden of support calls. Dan asked, “Won’t that negatively impact our revenue from classroom
training?” The team reported that less than 25% of customers were attending formal training classes (so
the answer was no).
Customers were excited by the idea and along came our first product, “CBT” or computer-based
training, on DVD. The CBT’s included video tutorials on popular design products like AutoCAD, Inventor,
AutoCAD Architecture, AutoCAD Mechanical, AutoCAD LT, AutoCAD Map and what became AutoCAD
Civil 3D (the old Land Desktop from Softdesk). We still offer this product today (check our store to see
available titles).
It’s been a fun ride and we’ve come a long way since then. Thank you to all the customers who have
been with us since day one and beyond. More on how CADLearning.com came about and our journey
into the online learning world in a future post.