Intergraph Announces "ActiveCGM" Controls To Deliver Improved Web Graphics

HUNTSVILLE, ALA., MAY 7, 1996 - Intergraph Corp. announced today that it is
enabling improved delivery of interactive content via the Internet and
corporate Intranets by synchronizing Intergraph's ActiveCGM technology
with Microsoft ActiveX Controls. ActiveCGM will become a component of the
ActiveX Technologies Framework for the interchange and delivery of 2D
technical information such as engineering drawings, schematic diagrams,
technical manuals and maps on the web.

Intergraph's ActiveCGM browser is being implemented as an ActiveX control
to work with Microsoft Internet Explorer and will be made available at no
cost. Because it is an ActiveX Control, ActiveCGM also can be embedded in
any ActiveX container application, including Microsoft Office, or used
with leading development tools such as Visual BasicR or Visual C++R.

The Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is an existing, widely accepted
international standard (ISO/IEC 8632:1992) for structured, intelligent 2D
vector and raster graphics. It is specified as the exchange format of
choice for 2D graphics by many influential industry and government groups,
including the Air Transport Association (commercial aerospace), CALS
(defense systems), and J2008 (automotive). The underlying technology for
dealing with CGM in a Microsoft WindowsR environment, which Intergraph
calls ActiveCGM, allows hyperlinking of vector and raster graphics defined
in CGM. ActiveCGM also supports zooming, panning, magnification,
navigation and animation of "intelligent," hyperlinked CGM graphics.

"ActiveCGM creates highly interesting possibilities in delivering graphics
and engineering information across the Internet," said Paul Maritz, group
vice president, worldwide platforms group at Microsoft. "ActiveCGM
technology is based on the Computer Graphics Metafile format, which is an
internationally accepted, vendor-neutral standard used in everything from
clip art to the documentation of aircraft. This is further evidence of
Microsoft's commitment to embracing existing standards and enhancing them
for the Internet. As an ActiveX Control, ActiveCGM addresses technical
content delivery across the Internet because CGM is already used
worldwide, already has a MIME type, and can be imported by Office
applications today."

Intergraph pioneered intelligent computer graphics, in which attribute
information is linked to features within the graphic. With the help of its
subsidiary, InterCAP Graphics Systems, it has now developed a set of tools
for creating, viewing and adding intelligence in the form of hyperlinks
and animation to CGM graphics. This capability makes CGM a very useful
complement to HTML, the text markup language for the World Wide Web (WWW).
Using ActiveCGM and HTML, authors can easily create high-quality,
interactive, graphics-driven documents that are compact and efficient for
access over the WWW. In the same way HTML links text data on the Web,
Intergraph's MetaLink Author adds hyperlinks to CGM graphics. By clicking
on "hotspots" in a drawing, a user can access related text, graphic, video
or other information

While ActiveCGM provides simple methods to animate and add hotspots to 2D
graphics today, Microsoft and Intergraph are working closely together to
synchronize the rich graphics environment of CGM with the revolutionary
active content modeling capabilities of ActiveVRML. This synchronization
of ActiveCGM and ActiveVRML is expected to result in new and exciting
tools for producing and publishing compact, efficient, standards-based,
interactive, animated, multimedia illustrations on the Internet and on
corporate Intranets.

ActiveX Controls are small, fast, full-featured components for the
Internet, intranets, and desktop systems. ActiveX Controls are already
broadly supported by hundreds of software vendors; they represent the
building blocks of active content. A key benefit of ActiveX technologies
is the ability to integrate applications into Web browsers, so data
managed by those applications becomes accessible as Web pages. This
technology, called ActiveX Documents, lets a user navigate a corporate
intranet to view a department's Web page, examine the department's budget
spreadsheet, query the database for sales data or write a memo -- all from
within the Web browser and without undergoing the expensive and
unnecessary process of converting that content into HTML format.

"The integration of ActiveX Controls with ActiveCGM is a very powerful way
to improve integration of 2D engineering and technical information across
the Web," said Rich Buchheim, executive vice president of Intergraph
Information Management and Solution Engineering. "So much of the success
of the Web is based on the power of hyperlinking and ActiveCGM which
brings a new level of hyperlinking to graphics. By adding the capability
to easily embed hyperlinks based on URLs or other linkage mechanisms,
ActiveCGM extends the usefulness of the CGM standard. All of our
applications will quickly take advantage of this approach."

INTERGRAPH BACKGROUND INFORMATION

A member of the Fortune 1000, Intergraph Corp. is the world's largest
company dedicated to supplying interactive computer graphics systems.
Products range from point solutions, meeting individual and departmental
needs, to integrated, enterprisewide systems. The company's common stock
trades on The NASDAQ Stock Market under the symbol INGR.
 
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