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1993-05-30
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Ranjit's CAD Corner
by Ranjit Sahai
Getting to Know Intergraph
When asked about CAD, most PC users think of Autodesk, the makers
of AutoCAD, not Intergraph. This despite the fact that Intergraph
is a larger company and its CAD solutions are standards with a
majority of the state departments of transportation, government
agencies, and large corporations worldwide.
Intergraph recently began a marketing blitz, as was evident from the
Micro-Station PC demonstration at our User Group's AutoCAD SIG on
December 1 last year, that is aimed at luring AutoCAD users to
MicroStation in the lucrative PC-based CAD software market. Though
Intergraph's MicroStation competes with Autodesk's AutoCAD,
Intergraph is not a software-only company; it is a workstation
vendor too.
Later in this article we will come back to discuss Intergraph's
hardware and software products and the direction they are headed in,
but first let me share with you a brief history of the company.
The Early Years
Intergraph was founded in 1969 as M&S Computing to cater to the
government's need for real-time computer based interactive graphics
applications. Initially the focus of the company was on mapping
applications and in the early seventies its clientele expanded to
include city and state agencies. Because these applications were
designed to run on computers prevalent at the time, namely
mainframes and minicomputers, only large companies could afford
them. The core of the software used by its applications was called
Interactive Graphics Design System (IGDS), a name you are sure to be
familiar with if you ever worked in a technical department of a
government agency or large company.
As its base of customers grew, Intergraph began developing
additional applications to address its customers' diverse needs. In
1980, M&S Comput-ing changed its name to Intergraph to better
reflect its business of supplying solutions in "interactive
graphics" (a term from which it derives its name). The year 1984
marked a turning point for the company when it began manufacturing
its own workstations rather than customizing Digital Equipment
Corporation's VAX minicomputer line as a VAR (Value Added Reseller).
Intergraph now employs nearly 10,000 people with offices in dozens
of countries and has revenues in excess of $1 billion per year.
The MicroStation Story
For PC CAD enthusiasts who were familiar with IGDS, 1987 must rank
as a milestone. This was the year when Intergraph acquired a 50
percent ownership interest in Bentley Systems, Inc. (BSI).
BSI had only then been founded by Keith Bentley and brothers with
the sole purpose of making an IGDS compatible software that would
run on affordable platforms. Because their software was designed
to run on microcomputer-based stations rather than high-end
workstations, it was named MicroStation. The brilliant programmers
at BSI sure knew how to weave magic! So good was the software
product and its potential for growth that Intergraph adopted
Micro-Station as a replacement for IGDS and ported it to run on
their own workstation line as well.
When MicroStation was initially released, it adhered to the sparse
interface used by IGDS. However, when BSI began porting
MicroStation to the Apple Macintosh they realized the immense
potential of a graphical user interface (GUI). It then decided to
embrace the Motif graphical interface for version 4 of MicroStation
across all platforms they support, including DOS and Unix.
At the time, being a radical departure from the IGDS interface, the
move to a graphical interface was a bold step. But now the entire
industry is moving towards providing its CAD software with a
standard GUI and BSI's maturity in GUI development shows.
MicroStation has the finest GUI interface that complements its
industrial strength power.
Currently MicroStation version 4 is available for a host of computer
platforms including the PC, Macintosh, Intergraph workstations
running Clix (a Unix derivative), and other Unix-based
workstations such as those from Hewlett-Packard and Sun. It also
has the capability to work with dual graphics screens, a technology
it pioneered in the early seventies, on all supported platforms.
Looking Ahead
Intergraph workstations have been running Clix for years and are
based on its own Clipper RISC chip. Though these workstations
have been designed for optimal graphics performance and come
standard with networking capabilities, many feel that with the
current emphasis on open systems, Intergraph's proprietary line
of workstations may have a hard time being accepted by corporations
that are committed to adopting open operating system standards.
To address the need of companies wanting a standard operating
system on its workstations, Intergraph has decided to adopt Windows
NT as an additional operating system supported on their
workstations. Clix will continue to be offered and enhanced, but
users will have a choice between it and NT. Intergraph has licensed
the source code of Windows NT from Microsoft and the port of NT on
their workstations is well under way.
In addition to their workstation line, Intergraph offers software
solutions for electronics (Dazix), architectural (DesignWorks),
structural (Frame-Works), civil (CivilWorks), and a host of other
engineering disciplines. One other software product offered by
Intergraph that should appeal to readers of this column is ModelView.
It is a 3D rendering software that used to be available for
workstations only but is now available for PCs, too. We shall look
at ModelView in an upcoming column.
By the middle of this year, Inter-graph hopes to ship a new version
of their flagship CAD software. The rumor mill has it that the
MicroStation 5 package for PCs based on the Intel chip
(386/486/Pentium) is expected to include three versions in the
same box: DOS, Windows on DOS, and Windows NT. This promises to be
an important upgrade. And for those who have a need to work with
AutoCAD compatible files, MicroStation 5 is expected to offer read
and write capability for the DWG format in addition to supporting
and enhancing its DGN file format. Currently MicroStation 4 offers
read-only capability through the AutoCAD Access module in its Nexus
upgrade for MicroStation.
Those of you considering a high-end CAD purchase owe it to
yourselves to investigate MicroStation because AutoCAD is not the
only game in town. MicroStation has a list price of $3,450 and is
developed by BSI. It is marketed by Intergraph Corporation,
Huntsville, AL 35894-0001, (800) 345-4856.
Ranjit is a Senior Engineer with Alpha Corporation, a
multi-disciplinary consulting firm based in Sterling, VA. He
welcomes comments on the CPCUG MIX BB in the Monitor Conference
or on CompuServe at his ID 70621,3147.