Applicon

Applicon Incorporated was one of the first vendors of Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) systems. It was founded in 1969 in Bedford, Massachusetts and later moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, after their acquisition of Manufacturing Data Systems, Inc. (MDSI) in 1986. Their main product was called Bravo CAD/CAM. The founder was Fontaine Richardson who earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois in 1968. He left in 1980 when selling the company (now MDSI) to Schlumberger. At the time, it had revenues of over $100 million per year.

Applicon Incorporated was acquired in 1999 by UGS Corp., a 1996 spin out of Electronic Data Systems,, which was later acquired by Siemens AG

Early Applicon Systems

Early Applicons, circa 1970s, ran on DEC PDP-11 mini-computers. Applicon modified the DEC operating system, which was then a single user OS, to one of the world's first multi-user operating systems. DEC's first multi-user OS was created with help from Applicon.

Another Applicon innovation was the ability to input commands using drawn character recognition. (See Patent 4560830 )Early CAD provided a stylus and tablet instead of a mouse for a user interface. The tablet was mapped to the screen i.e the top-left and bottom right of the screen and the tablet were mapped to the same points. Applicon provided the ability to train the system to interpret characters drawn on the tablet and to associate them with commands to the system. For example drawing the symbol for alpha could mean "execute". Commands could consist of more than one symbol for example two dots could be interpreted as "move relative" which would move the currently selected items by the distance between points p1 and p2 where the dots indicate the location of the points. The character recognition worked very well (was very consistent) which is particularly amazing considering the small memory foot print that it used.

At this time, Applicon's software was written entirely in DEC's assembler language. A four work-station system had typically only about 64K words of memory. A word was 16 bits long. Program code was swapped in and out of memory using what was then called memory overlay techniques. Magnetic core memory was used until around 1979. Work stations used storage tube displays. Hard drives used removable platters and were as large as washing machines. A four workstation system cost about $400,000 in 1970s dollars including a pen plotter which cost about $60,000 (Xynetics plotter). At this time, only large companies could afford to use CAD machines and they had to man the workstations three shifts a day because of the cost.

In the mid to late '70's, Applicon systems were used to design LSIs (large scale integrated circuits) and later VLSI (very large scale integrated circuits) the precursors of today's dense computer chips. It was also used for mechanical and electrical diagrams for various kinds of engineering projects e.g. power plant design.

Bravo could have had the first integrated PDM system which was called the "Librarian". Files were stored in the library and could be checked out and referenced into assemblies. Once placed back into the library, assemblies that referenced parts would be updated.

The end of Applicon came in 1989 when they partnered with PTC and sold a product called Mechanical design assistant. Some of Applicons biggest customers like Otis elevator and StorageTek used this software which later became Pro/Engineer, and became some of PTC's biggest customers.

External links

• review of Bravo CAD/CAM