MicroGDS Has New Owners (Again)

Sometimes, you don't know acquisitions have occurred. And even when they do, nothing changes after wards. Like this one:

Software marketing company Selective Software Holdings acquires the British business of Informatix Software International (ISI) from Japanese parent, Informatix Incorporated.

The newly acquired company will keep its Informatix Software International name, and retains the right to develop and market MicroGDS and Piranesi worldwide -- except in Japan.

New versions of MicroGDS CAD software and Piranesi non-realistic rendering software will be released later this year. ISI had acquired the software from US-based Convergent Group in 1997.

The press release leaves out the earlier history of MicroGDS. It was first developed as WinCAD by CADcorp of England, to be a micro-computer version of GDS -- mimicking the path Bentley Systems took in creating a cheaper version of Intergraph's software. ("Micro-computer" was the original term for what we now call a desktop computer.) GDS Solutions was owned by EDS, who also owned UGS (now known as Siemens PLM Systems). Just as Intergraph bought a portion of Bentley Systems, EDS bought MicroGDS, but later sold both to Informatix of Japan.

When MicroGDS was released in 1992, GDS called it the first "professional" CAD package to run on the then-new Windows, which had the benefit of "giving users direct graphical user interface (GUI) 'hotlinks' to other Windows-based applications such as spreadsheets and word processing."