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.