|
History of Intellicad |
|
From Wikipedia |
|
"Intellicad" began as an independent AM/FM/GIS (Automated Mapping/Facilities Management) software firm in La Mesa, CA USA. One of its products, AutoCAD Data Extension, allowed multiple users to access the same AutoCAD drawing, or have a single drawing point to entities stored in other drawings[8]. Softdesk, the then largest third-party product developer for Autodesk, acquired this company in 1994 and used the know-how to secretly develop an AutoCAD clone[9]. Autodesk had recently entered into direct competition with Cyco Software (another third-party Autodesk partner), and Softdesk was concerned that the same could happen to them. The AutoCAD-clone project was kept semi-secret under the project name "Phoenix". In December 1996 Autodesk announced that it would instead buy Softdesk outright for $90 million in common stock. A complaint regarding the inclusive sale of Intellicad was filed with the US Federal Trade Commission. According to FTC Docket No. C-3756: In approximately June 1996, Softdesk determined that it no longer had the financial ability to support continued development and marketing of the Intellicad product. The head of the team that had developed the product proposed to purchase the technology and formed Boomerang Technology, Inc. ("Boomerang") for the purpose of acquiring the product, completing its development, and bringing the product to market. Boomerang negotiated with Softdesk for the purchase of the Intellicad product and exchanged draft purchase agreements with Softdesk. Softdesk, however, terminated those negotiations at around the time that Autodesk agreed to acquire Softdesk. Softdesk representatives previously told Boomerang that Softdesk would sell the Intellicad product to Boomerang if Softdesk were purchased by someone other than Autodesk, but would not sell it to Boomerang if Softdesk were purchased by Autodesk... After being advised by Commission staff that Autodesk's acquisition of Softdesk raised competitive concerns in the market for personal computer-based CAD engines, Softdesk resumed negotiations with Boomerang and divested and sold all of its rights in the Intellicad product to Boomerang pursuant to a Technology Transfer Agreement dated February 21, 1997. On that same date, Boomerang assigned and sold all of its rights to the Intellicad product to Visio Corporation. By late 1996 a formal search for new venture capital was underway. Marketing director Robert Drummer was referred to John Forbes at Visio Corporation[10] and gave him the pitch. Then, according to this first-hand account, "He called back a few hours later and said that he along with Jeremy Jaech and Ted Johnson would be chartering a plane that day and would be down to take a look at a demo. They arrived in San Diego that evening." A core team of nine Softdesk/Intellicad developers soon moved to become employees of Visio. In March 1997 the FTC ruled "Autodesk or Softdesk from re-acquiring the Intellicad product or any entity that owns or controls it, without prior notice to the Commission for a 10 year period"[11][12]. The FTC granted Visio to acquire Boomerang completely for $6.7 million in the same ruling that prevented Autodesk from doing so (above)[13]. IntelliCAD's original architect, Mike Bailey, turned and left Visio before the first release. Nevertheless, after several years of legacy development, "Visio IntelliCAD" (one 'D' for the product, two for name of the original company) was finally released for the first time to the public in 1998[14] with a very low price compared to AutoCAD. 12,000 licenses of IntelliCAD were sold in the first three months before new concerns over software stability emerged. In total, Visio's original IntelliCAD sold about 30,000 copies - far less than some expected. IntelliCAD development seemed to need more resources than Visio could grant it[15]. At this point, Visio "granted a royalty- free, perpetual license for the IntelliCAD (98 version) source code to The IntelliCAD Technology Consortium"[16] [17]. On September 15, 1999 Microsoft announced that it would acquire Visio Corporation (completed in January 2000) - a deal which evidently included Visio's "IntelliCAD 2000" fork[18]. The IntelliCAD 98 source code branch, however, continued independent development under the new ITC[19]. Ten years later (2009), about 50 ITC members globally share ITC development costs as membership fees. In turn, each member receives technology licenses and some guidance for final application development. On October 29, 2008 the first test release of the new IntelliCAD version 7 was announced at the annual ITC meeting held at Athens, Greece[20]. Among the features is complete replacement of the old ITC internal entity database and SDS API with ODA DWGdirect and DRX API[21]. Additional info History of IntelliCad by Ralph Grabowski |