INTERGRAPH / BENTLEY / AUTODESK CORPORATE AND CAD PRODUCT HISTORY

Late 1980s. . . . . .

Intergraph had its mainframe 32 bit IGDS CAD software
running and producing at 4 times manual drafting productivity.
They were pioneers of CAD and display processor cards in the
1970s. They invented the reference file system of CAD file
and data organization.

Intergraph, even though it had the major project experience,
was second to McDonnell-Douglas in CAD productivity and speed.
Later, AutoCAD copied the M-D layer system of data organization.

M-D CAD, after all, was in use designing aircraft, and it had the
best technology anywhere.

AutoDesk didn't even exist at the time. When it started, it was
a hobbyists game running on early PCs.

Bentley Systems Inc.then came on the scene with a knock-off of
the major CAD player, Intergraph IGDS. BSI's MicroStation
ran on what we now know to be the primitive IBM 80286 chip PC.

BSI patched its MicroStation files into the Digital
Equipment Corp. [DEC] VAX mainframe, urning the VMS OS.
The transmission belt from PC to the mainframe was Kermit SW.

BSI's MicroStation was functioning in a 32 bit mainframe
industrial environment way before AutoCAD was out of its
16 bit home hobbyist environment.

AutoDesk badmouthed the "big iron" 32 bit CAD SW products,
and it got itself positioned on the desks of the secretaries in
small architectural offices and small engineering firms.

Their claim to architects was that ALL CAD SW automation
was AutoCAD. AutoDesk lied furiously to gain converts. The
architectural managers bought in to the lie, and that was
provided by the architect employee-hobbyists who introduced
ACAD into the architectural offices via the secretaries'
computers. No matter that more CPU speed, more users,
more display computing, more display RAM, more main RAM,
more main and display bus bandwidth, and higher resolution
display cards and monitors were required.

After all, Autodesk said that since the engineers were using
ACAD [billed as all CAD] the architects should use it, ......and,
would you believe, Autodesk said the same thing to the
engineers regarding the architects. They then persuaded
the construction firms to join into the con, and to form a
triad of lies.

McDonnell-Douglass and Intergraph were still the players
that offered four times manual drafting productivity and
better. IG and M-D customers paid for their investments
in a year, and they made huge profits in the second year.
IG and M-D were engineers, and they didn't lie in their
marketing approaches. AutoCAD lied, and they accumulated
huge numbers of CAD-interested and automation-interested
converts.

It took years until ACAD was run on 32 bit machines, and
they couldn't even achieve 1.5 times manual productivity
prior to the 32 bit machines. That bumped them up to two
times manual productivity, which then had digital benchmarks
from M-D and IG at better than 4 times manual productivity.
Together M-D and IG had better than fifty percent of the
CAD market. ArchiCad and Computervision were there too.
ACAD stopped badmouthing the 32-bit "big Iron" computers
and the 32-bit CAD SW products. They were now in the
32 bit world. They bit their lies.

The die was cast. ACAD was there to stay. Super-fast
hyped ACAD operators saved the day again for AutoCAD.
M-D tried to produce PC based CAD. BSI was a business
partner of 32 bit Intergraph, and BSI went to the superior
UNIX OS [which was knocked off by Microsoft], and to high
capacity 32 bit UNIX PCs. Microsoft was still in its cocoon.

BSI became fifty percent owned by the $5 billion sales
biggie, Intergraph, however, that percentage interest
seems to have diminished.

My question is this:

What is the history of the corporate ownership of IG
and BSI as well as the history of their CAD SW products?
What is the history of the market in CAD? Who were the
innovators? Who lied to gain? Who told the truth?

Today, IG and BSI seem to be taking separate paths of ownership,
technical and marketing philosophies, and product technologies.

What is the history of the ownership of those firms and of
their CAD SW offerings?

Architects, like lemmings, bought into the palabra of AutoDesk,
and they gained huge market share. The honest people who were
the SW designers in AutoDesk took the available proceeds and
designed even better ACAD products.

Things happened that grossly affected the lives of countless
architects and engineers.

What happened?

Now its . . . . . . 2007. . . .

Who, out there, has the history?

Ralph Hertle

 

hey, I have the history. I bought AutoCAD in 1989 and started my own
business. I now live in a million dollar house in central CA (middle
class) and make a great living using the program. I play golf 4 days a
week, have a great and good looking wife, and have more business than I
can ever hope to do...thanks to AutoCAD

any other questions?

 

Dave:

You seemed to have skipped over what your main product is.

What is the work that you do on AutoCAD and that you sell
to the clients who need that product?

Don't you have a travel schedule, make travel reservations, buy
clothes, buy and change clothes, go out to dinner, run your Club
Cadet in the yard, race a sports car, play with the children and the
pets, or go out on your 30 ft. sloop-rigged fiberglass sail boat?

How do you get all those activities into the 3 days per week that
you are not riding around the golf course?

Seriously, I'm surprised that your work activities, e.g., symphonies
written, patents awarded, books written, patients saved, buildings
built, or airlines founded, for example, are not your primary
achievements and source of self esteem and pride.

BTW, hey is spelled, Hey.

The history of CAD is still a worthwhile topic.

Ralph Hertle

 

heh, while I agree that the history of CAD is a worthwhile topic, I get
tired of Acad bashing, which is what I perceived your original post to
be. If I misinterpreted, I apologize.

I don't have a travel schedule, I refuse to travel for business. No
reason to travel for meetings or otherwise in this day and age. And of
course I buy and change clothes. My work outfit is the standard central
CA issue: shorts, golf shirt, no socks or shoes. Since I have no formal
education beyond a high school diploma I have yet to write a book, save
a patient, or personally build a building. What I did do is leave the
home nest at 15yo, got myself through high school, excelling in only
math, drafting, and beer drinking, and worked in a trade for some years
that lacked anyone (that I could find) with any seriousness about the
design aspect. So, I took the opportunity to do the design work myself
with what I perceive to be an excellent program that has made me a lot
of money in the years that I have used it to produce what my clients
tell me is excellent work. My self esteem and pride are genuine and
earned IMO. I made myself an upper class, large tax paying citizen
through hard work and persistence, with the help of AutoCAD. If that's
wrong somehow, well, I again apologize.

And, I don't have a sailboat, a fancy sports car, or any other amenity
that some may feel is important. What I do have is a great wife and a so
so golf game. Golf takes 3 hours to play. I live on a golf course. That
leaves 21 hours of the day to produce work, eat, sleep, etc. Priorities
are what are important.

My trade is the commercial glass business. My products are high end high
rise buildings in the US and abroad. I turn down more work than I can
ever do as a one person business.

History of anything is an important and interesting topic. Dislike of
AutoCAD has been beaten to death and is a sore subject for me. As one
who owes his present lifestyle to the program, I get tired of it. I
don't mean to offend anyone, only to offer another side of the argument.
Dave
DDP
ps: what's a "club cadet" ??

 

Dave:


Dave Jones wrote

You have no doubt earned what you've earned by
honest hard work and planning. More power to you.

Its "Cub Cadet", and, sorry for the spelling error.

A Cub Cadet is a brand of power riding lawn mowers
that is sold at the Home Depot in Edison, NJ.

Regarding the marketing prowess of Autodesk...they
excelled at marketing the AutoCAD product. The did
gain huge marketing share, but they did lie in there earlier
days.

For example:

They badmouthed big iron [which was highly efficient
and profitable.]

They bad mouthed 32 bit machines. [but they were
losing market share just before the 32 bit machines
came on the market and saved their bacon.]

They lied about the supposed high costs and low profits
of big iron. [big iron did have a high cost because you had
to get 4 workstations to work on a mainframe with central
disk storage, a network server, and a plotter on the system.
That was +USD200k in the late 1980s. Each big iron CAD
worker could expect 4 times manual drawing productivity.
The Autodesk lie was that PCs were cheaper. The dinky PCs
indeed did have an initial lower cost but by the time you
added a faster CPU, graphics card, larger high res monitor,
more RAM, larger disk storage, display RAM, network,
network server, physical facilities, HVAC, more furniture
and floor space for the larger number of CAD workers
needed compared to big iron, you had a total price
that was in the same price ball park as big iron. One CAD
manager told me that when 32 bit computers came out and
he had added all the extras he still didn't have an
integrated system. Another guy, an architectural firm
business manager, told me that added to the technical
disparity between big iron and stand alone AutoCAD PCs,
the AutoCAD shop needed 2times the number of people
to run its [early] 32bit Intel AutoCAD shop, and that the
cost of the added employee benefits, e.g., insurance, made
the AutoCAD a break-even or worse business venture.]

AutoCAD started to achieve 2 times productivity with the
32 bit computer, allthewhile the "evil" 32 bit big iron, that
already had the above mentioned integrated system features,
had 4 times drafting productivity. [And, and that's a big and.
The AutoCAD shops had no networks or network servers -
which was the central system of the multi-user big iron
systems.]

AutoCAD, said an architect friend or mine, was the "CAD
program with the big mouth." [AutoCAD claimed more than it
delivered. It was touch and go for many firms for many years
whether or not their AutoCAD shop was profitable, and
the big iron shops, e.g., the largest engineering, architecture,
and construction management firm, CRS Sirrine, were
making tons of money.]

AutoCAD hung in there with the individual PC. [The jump from
small firm to large firm was too steep, and most firms
wanted to keep local control over their salary mark-up
employees, and they stayed with the small PC-based AutoCAD.
AutoCAD billed itself as a possibility for small business firms
that had one or more office PCs, or that they could additionally
acquire and upgrade.]

The big iron firms had beautiful raised floor computer rooms
with hidden cables, but have you looked inside the modern
AutoCAD computer server rooms? [The rooms are a mess:
no raised floors, tied bundles of exposed cables leading
everywhere up racks [yes, AutoCAD had to get rack mounted
servers and networks and copy everything that made big iron
profitable], and across ceiling ductwork and storeroom
shelves, for example. The AutoCAD server rooms remain a
mostly an ungainly afterthought.]

AutoCAD was lucky. [DEC had a great engineered product
and bad philosophic vision - and ultimately failed. IBM had
an ultra pompous corporate community and had no capacity
for structuring or evaluating market oriented software
innovations - and they failed. Tons of PC makers swarmed
over IBM and took it down. AutoCAD, if you've recently
read its web site, shows signs of incredible aloofness and
religiosity - and the seeds for their failure are now evident.
The PEs, SolidWworks, MicroStations, and TurboCADs are
moving into the future possible markets of AutoCAD.]

AutoCAD overbuilt its excessively rigid layer system.
[For years AutoCAD had no reference files - only the
selective layer system copped from McDonnell-Douglas.
AutoCAD's reference file system through version 2005
is still lame.]

For years AutoCAD had no reference files - only the
selective layer system copped from McDonnell-Douglas.
[AutoCAD's reference file system through version 2005
is still lame.]

The AutoCAD-is-CAD religion was deplorable. [The super-
speedy AutoCAD worker-exponents were an embarrassment
to rational hard working types.]

Due possibly to what I term the faith-based religion of
AutoCAD marketing and public relations, the customers
did not compare the AutoCAD and MicroStation CAD
programs is actual work and testing. [In all of my career
I know of only two firms that actually set about to
comparatively evaluate the two programs. What is happening
in the mid range civil engineering forms is that both
programs are in the same shops. Managers are seeing
the numbers. So called client requirements determine
what programs are employed on projects. Some client's
requirements are still based on that early draftsman's
AutoCAD 10 program that was hyped to the client's
management, and that was billed as automation. The
programs are probably for the first time being critically
compared. What is happening? AutoCAD is seen to excel
for drawing sheet production. MicroStation is far better
for large complex projects. AutoCAD has so many trained
and partially trained workers in the market that their
wage rates are 20 parent lower than MicroStation
workers. That competition is pulling down the wage rates
of the MicroStation workers.]

Those are the Cons of AutoCAD.

Some of the advantages of AutoCAD are:

The main areas where AutoCAD has excelled are in the
practical drawing commands and easy way to start and
plot separate individual drawings.

In spite of the basic design architecture of AutoCAD its
high sales enabled high investment in R&D. In time and
due to funding the product has become highly sophisticated.

The pan and zoom feature seemed to be a facile device.
[however, when it is compared to micro station's GUI
features, the pan and zoom are just about all there
is. Pan and Zoom were indeed useful for individual
drawings and local modifications. On a project level
reliance upon pan and zoom hampered productivity,
while the multiple window, reference file windowing,
and viewing capabilities of MicroStation enhanced
production.]

Plotting: [AutoCAD did enable preconfigured plotters
to be able to plot individual drawings.]

AutoCAD is a good program for making individual drawings
quickly. It makes one sheet at a time and plots them easily.
[for large pre-planned projects AutoCAD is less
efficient than MicroStation.]


Ralph Hertle

 

I'd like to believe that all large successful corporations have gotten
to where they are with lily white ideals and integrity, and honesty.
But, it's not so. And that's a fact of corporate life in America. Where
Autodesk got their market share doesn't interest me to much. Does
AutoCAD do the job that I need it to do? That's what I'm worried about.

thank you for the history lesson. A bit skewed IMO but it was an
interesting read
Dave
DDP

 

Dave:

I thought that some MicroStation and AutoCAD systems and project level
types would have more to say. Now it occurs to me that the respective
readers may not be out there.

Skewed? Yes. I agree. I don't have all the information that others have.



Here is more text for the rant:

I don't have a lot of dates and names, however, the gist of what I said is
true. There is a great deal to be said by others who have other types of
direct knowledge of events and experience. For example, users [which
to Intergraph and MicroStation is synonymous with customers] of
MicroStation and AutoCAD saw every detail in the programs, and they
saw everything that needed to be fixed, and that was either not fixed
due to resistance or that was happily upgraded. The SW consultants,
dealers, and publishers have totally different things to say. Then there
are probably interesting stories in the realm of intellectual property
and patents. It would be interesting to hear from the marketing and sales
people regarding the history of market approaches and clashes.

Intergraph, even though it isn't a major player today due to its own
marketing and sales policies, was a player in the history of CAD. AutoCAD
benefited by the defaults of Intergraph's marketing policies and
philosophy. Intergraph desired to sell to computers system and CAD
managers virtually to the exclusion of all its CAD workers, who were
its real users, and by doing so they ignored their future. IG should have
courted its workers, and also the students. They didn't. Unless you
were already an employee of a major chemical or engineering firm you
had no chance of learning IGDS or MicroStation. Well...you could have
paid for their training, but to have a trainer come to your offices was
$1,000 per day. They kept their focus on their money trees and ignored
the futures.

Intergraph has, however, wisely built upon its PDS Plant Design System
SW and extended that into the automotive and ship design worlds.
They are flubbing when it comes to getting major buildings built using
the PDS SW. They somehow think that the big engineering companies and
not future user markets are their future.

Bentley did start a low cost SW sales program to colleges, professors
and students, and that continues. But if you go to the local community
colleges, they only know and teach AutoCAD, Solidworks, Photoshop,
and rarely PE. It isn't that Inventor is not too well known, its that
Solidworks is the main deal.

Intergraph ignored its future in two markets: they didn't want to
integrate typography, raster images, and graphic design into the
IGDS, or MicroStation, CAD SW. Also, they brazenly ignored the
mechanical design world that is now occupied by UGS, PE, Solidworks,
TurboCAD, Vellum, Catia and inventor. Now Alias and Bunkspeed.
Bentley has also stepped out of that arena even though it has a
good basic 3D platform. Intergraph may have defaulted in the
mapping and GIS area, although, there isn't enough information
out in the marketplace to know everything about what they are
doing.

Have Intergraph and Bentley split up? Bentley, the former pirate,
was at one time fifty percent owned by Intergraph. Is that no more?

More is happening elsewhere. PE is poised to expand its product
design and CAM SW, and to consolidate its industrial and facilities
SW programs. My bet is that the architectural market is going to
endorse PE and its modules and build some great buildings using
PE. They'll win more market share than Intergraph. AutoCAD has
structural problems in its SW, and it seems to be trying to build up
BIS. BIS, however, is for building managers and planners, who
work with 3D after the fact of a design being created. Plant design
3D software is the path. There, the 3D SW that also allows designs
to be created, placed into decision trees and evaluated will
probably win. The both the engineers and the conceptual designers
will need their input early on in the design stages, and that is not
where BIM excels. BIM is for recording completed projects.

Advertising? Most boring and uninformative - Intergraph.
Most exciting and mysterious - Bunkspeed. Most silent - Parametric
Technologies. Asleep - MicroStation. Most confusing -
Alias/Maya/AutoCAD/. Right on - TurboCAD.

Beyond the hype and lack of information what is the future of CAD?

 

Hi,

i think you get more information about old CAD systems. They were expensive
and closed systems. The productivity was not what you are saying. Did you
use those systems yourself? I started 1980, those systems were very
difficult to use. I used CD2000, Medusa, Catia, Calma and from 1986 AutoCAD.
The OS was not great but the program itself was good enough and easier to
use and customize than the older CAD programs. We started to use
applications very early and that was a huge advantage. The history has
proved, AutoCAD has been the most succesful CAD company. It has many flaws
but the others are not that much better.

J.

 

Tom Twist wrote:


[text omitted]

I searched for PseudoStation on Alta-Vista.com and I found references to
PseudoStation on,

http://www.upfrontezine.com/trivia.htm .


These are, and I quote for editorial purposes only:


.. . . . . . . . .

"
Trivia #3

Q3: What was the first name for MicroStation?

Clue: Half of the current name was part of the first name.

A3: PseudoStation.

Readers Comment

Robert Melnyk comments on last week's trivia question: "PseudoStation
ran on a Tektronix-type terminal attached to an Intergraph VAX to access
the data files. It was written by two of the Bentley boys. Of course,
Intergraph nearly had kittens when they caught wind of what the boys
were up to. It was either sue them or buy them. [Intergraph bought 50%
of Bentley. -Ed.]
"I had supper with Ray Bentley one time and he was telling the story
about drilling a hole through the concrete floor so they could drop a
dataline into the computer operations centre to connect their
development machine."



.. . . . . . . . .

"
Trivia #17

Q16. The first time Bentley displayed a product to Intergraph users in
Huntsville, Alabama:
a. What was the month and year?
b. What company name did they use?

Clue: The demo ran in a hotel room.

A16: a. May 1985.
b. Dynamic Solutions

They were located in a regular guest room at the Hilton in Huntsville.
They had a modem line dialed in to a VAX in Lionville so they could
demonstrate PsuedoStation.
PsuedoStation was over US$9,000 a pop, as I recall.

- David Greenbaum, Axiom International



.. . . . . . . . .

"
All contents copyright upFront.eZine Publishing, Ltd., 2001 and all
rights are reserved. No material may be reproduced electronically or in
print without written permission from upFront.eZine Publishing, 34486
Donlyn Avenue Abbotsford BC, V2S 4W7, Canada, unless otherwise noted.
"

[Sorry, however, I understand that limited editorial excepts are
permitted under US copyright laws.]




During the late 1980s I got my first position as a CAD drafter at CRS
Sirrine in NYC. That division did highly professional multi-floor
interior architectural design for offices tall buildings in NYC. They
had four IGDS CAD intelligent terminals with dual 21" color screens
running on Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX VMS mainframe, model [
]. [Colors were a possible 255.] They also had a washing machine-size 6
or 12-disk hard drive that held 150 or 300 Mb of data, a LAN and a
router with SW. The VAX multi-user and multi-task mainframe was itself a
server. They had a large 36" W. format Tektronix electrostatic plotter
and plotting software. There was a computer room with HVAC.

I was just starting out, and I was by no means an expert. I was learning
IGDS CAD and also making daily, weekly and monthly backups on 1/2" 20 Mb
tapes. Dave Benander, Registered Architect, was the CAD Manager at the
CRS Sirrine NY office. He answered one-thousand questions for me
regarding IGDS and MicroStation, and I owe him my gratitude for his
interest and the time he provided.

The General Manager of CRSS NY said that the complete four-terminal
setup including plotter and plotting SW cost $250K. He also said that
they were regularly achieving four times manual productivity, and that
they had paid for the system within the first year.

CRSS in Dallas ,Texas, had their VAX system connected via modems and
copper phone lines to the DEC VAX at CRSS in NYC. Intergraph-IGDS CAD
operators at either locations were alternately referencing and modifying
the same .dgn CAD files. Even though the Intergraph terminals had lots
of local display ram and some local processing power the conversations
were slow. Just a little to slow to be able to produce drawings
economically at the distance, I understood. They were demonstrating
co-designing in different engineering disciplines with the intention of
creating cooperative interactive designing at different locations.
Nonetheless, it was an exciting demonstration, and the CRSS CAD
managers, System Managers and technicians were quite aware of the
history in the field of architecture that they were making. Digital
Equipment Corp. was an expert with WAN, and somewhere they were in the
picture.

To see those referenced lines made in a design file thousands of miles
distant appear locally on the screen in a different active design file
was exciting.

Shortly thereafter CRSS got a PC that had an 80286 chip, and that ran
MicroStation PC. That was connected to the VAX VMS mainframe using
modems and Kermit SW. The uSTN PC was not up to the same production
speeds as the IGDS system. They also acquired some Unix terminals that
were as fast or faster than the IGDS terminals.

In the same NYC office of CRSS Dave Benander observed that a couple of
architects who had not been hired to work on Intergraph CAD were
interested in the free AutoCAD ver. 10 CAD program, and that they were
running it on their own PCs at home. Dave said to mark his words, that
AutoCAD would eventually become the most common CAD program in architecture.

CRS Sirrine was at the time the largest architectural firm, the largest
engineering firm, and the largest construction management firm in the U.S.

The respective CAD Managers and Systems Managers were the real experts,
and I'm sure they have the history that they themselves made.



Well, enough of this talk. I need to get busy and continue developing
the inventions that I intend to patent.

Ralph Hertle