     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.
