Applicon 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. CAD/CAM abbreviates the combination of computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing . ... Exterior, Unitarian Meeting House (1816). ... For the railroad company, see Ann Arbor Railroad. ...

Applicon was acquired in 1999 by UGS Corp., a 1996 spin out of Electronic Data Systems. UGS (previously known as Unigraphics Solutions Inc. ... Electronic Data Systems (EDS) NYSE: EDS (LSE: EDC) is a global IT consulting company that defined the outsourcing business when it was established in 1962 by Ross Perot. ...

Early Applicon Systems

Early Applicons, circa 1970's, 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. The PDP-11 was a 16-bit minicomputer sold by Digital Equipment Corp. ... Introduction We all probably heard of supercomputers. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Another Applicon innovation was the ability to input commands using drawn character recognition. 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 swaped 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 1970's 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. ... A 16×16 cm area core memory plane of 128×128 bits, i. ... Typical hard drives of the mid-1990s. ...

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. An integrated circuit (IC) is a thin chip consisting of at least two interconnected semiconductor devices, mainly transistors, as well as passive components like resistors. ...

External links

• article on acquisition.
• review of Bravo CAD/CAM