The company was founded in 1979 in Stockholm, Sweden as a software development company aimed at the market of personal computers that was evolving in those days.
In 1985 the company specialized in computer aided design – CAD – and changed its name to “cadett” to make this specialization clear to the market. The development of “elNett”, an electrical design software, started.
At the same time in the German city Mönchengladbach the company MG-Data GmbH was founded to develop and market the electrical design software MG-CAD.
In 1986 at a fair in Birmingham, England, cadett and MG-Data met for the first time. The result was that the further development of elNett and MG-CAD merged into a joint venture.
The Scandinavian version of the resulting software was marketed under the name cadett ELSA. The somewhat different German version was still sold under the name MG-CAD.
The cooperation was continuously intensified and in 2003 the two companies finally merged under the name cadett.
The two national software versions that then existed were replaced with one single multi-lingual and multi-standard software called cadett ELSA.
Some of cadett’s major milestones are listed below.
| 1979 | The Swedish company is founded in Järfälla and publishes its first catalog of proprietary software for microcomputers. |
| 1982 | The company is expanding its operations to include hardware and accessories. |
| 1985 | The CAD operations in Sweden start. |
| MG-Data GmbH is founded in Germany and introduces MG-CAD 1.0 (later cadett ELSA). | |
| The company moves from Rosenlundsgatan on Södermalm to Datavägen in Järfälla, Sweden. | |
| 1986 | The company takes the name ”cadett ab”. |
| The offices are moved to Kista, Stockholm, Sweden. | |
| 1987 | cadett ELSA 2.0 is the first Swedish version. In Germany, the software is sold under the name MG-CAD 2.0. |
| 1988 | cadett a/s in Norway is founded. The office is located in Oslo. Norway has been one of cadett’s most important markets ever since. |
| 1990 | Deliveries av cadett ELSA 3.0 begin. It has revolutionary integrated design environment. |
| 1991 | The offices are moved to Sollentuna, Stockholm, Sweden. |
| 1992 | cadett ELSA 3.8 involves a functionality lift of rarely seen scope. Among other things, automatic zero numbering is entered directly in the form sheets. First in the world! |
| 1994 | cadett ELSA 3.85 introduces yet another revolutionary technology: the OnLine automation! |
| The offices are moved to Upplands Väsby, Stockholm, Sweden. | |
| 1995 | Network support is introduced in cadett ELSA 4.1. |
| 1996 | cadett ELSA 4.15 is our first product with support for Windows NT. We are thus moving to the platform where we still belong today. Today’s Windows 7 and 10 are, in fact, updated versions of the original Windows NT. |
| 1997 | All hardware sales cease. Since that time, 100% of the operations have been around software for electrical schematics construction. |
| The offices are moved to Sollentuna, Stockholm, Sweden. | |
| 1998 | cadett ELSA 5.0 begins to ship. This version introduces a user interface based on Windows. |
| 1999 | cadett ELSA 6.0 with Dynamic OnLine is shown for the first time. This is a new technological breakthrough. The tables can be edited and the circuit diagram sheets are updated automatically! |
| 2000 | cadett opens an office in Malmö, Sweden. |
| 2002 | cadett ELSA 7.0 is another milestone that is passed in the development of the product. |
| A brand new directory of client/server technology and a new drawing archive, combined with a new user interface, will dramatically improve performance. | |
| 2003 | cadett acquires MG-Data GmbH in Germany and opens an office in Jülich, Nordrhein-Westfahlen. |
| cadett GmbH and cadett ab becoma sister companies, both wholly owned by cadett Holding AB. | |
| cadett ELSA 7.5 is the first cadett ELSA available in several product levels. Professional and Basic are the first two. | |
| The Stockholm office is relocated to the Lunda industrial area in Spånga, Stockholm, Sweden. | |
| 2004 | cadett ELSA Start is presented. The new complete electrical schematics design software has extremely competitive pricing. |
| cadett ELSA View is introduced, a product soley for viewing without editing, but with a low cost. | |
| cadett ELSA 7.7 introduces increased Symbol-related functionality and a large number of other functions. | |
| cadett decides to use the new product AutoCAD Electrical as a new platform for cadett ELSA. | |
| 2006 | cadett’s introduction of AutoCAD Electrical has now led cadett to become Sweden’s by far largest supplier of AutoCAD Electrical, larger than all competitors together. |
| cadett GmbH is named VAR (Value Added Reseller) for AutoCAD Electrical. | |
| cadett sets sales record and moves back to Järfälla, where the company started 27 years earlier. | |
| 2007 | cadett ELSA 10.0 with the biggest news in many years is starting to be delivered. |
| Several simultaneous users in the projects is a new function. Another function is superprojects, an opportunity to link several subprojects together. | |
| cadett breaks sales records again and decides to start a development branch in India. | |
| 2009 | cadett ELSA 12.0, our 29th release since its inception, introduces a wide range of news, some of which has been developed in India. |
| However, the brand new Symbol Depositor was developed mainly at the cadett office in Malmö, Sweden. | |
| Hyperdynamic contact mirrors were one of the functions that the Indian development team contributed. | |
| 2010 | 25 years of cadett ELSA celebrated with new version numbers. We start counting releases instead of the previous sometimes rather confusing version numbers. The first version with the new numbering system is cadett ELSA R30. |
| Support for Windows 7 and 64-bit operating systems is introduced. | |
| 2011 | The first version of the Options Manager – “Made in India” – is introduced in cadett ELSA R31. |
| 2012 | cadett ELSA Enterprise is being introduced. |
| Support for thin clients is a major breakthrough for performance, stability and remote access. Effective work with just a normal Internet connection to the server suddenly becomes a reality, when the bandwith requirement is reduced by 99%. | |
| 2014 | cadett signs an Autodesk ISV-agreement (Independent Software Vendor). The agreement makes cadett a distributor of well-known Autodesk products such as AutoCAD Electrical and AutoCAD P&ID, bundled in packages with cadett ELSA. |
| cadett makes its strongest financial statement with the biggest profit ever. | |
| 2015 | While it is the 30th anniversary of the first cadett ELSA-version, the cadett ELSA R35 lifts performance and stability to the highest level to date. |
| 2016 | cadett ELSA Autodesk Vault Integration is included in cadett ELSA directly upon delivery. |
| cadett ELSA R36 introduces support for Windows 10 while eliminating support for 32-bit operating systems. DVD as an installation medium also disappears. Now only the internet is valid! | |
| 2017 | cadett ELSA Solo with built-in CAD engine based on AutoCAD OEM is reintroduced after cadett signed a cooperation agreement with Mensch und Maschine in Germany, Europé’s larges CAD dealer. |
| 2018 | cadett starts direct sales to Icelandic customers from the Swedish office. |
| cadett ELSA’s MultiServer solution is introduced. | |
| 2019 | The company celebrates its 40th anniversary with new sales and profit records. |
| cadett is expanding the portfolio of Autodesk products to include BIM 360. |