NC Graphics

NC Graphics was founded by Arthur Flutter in Waterbeach, Cambridge, England, in 1977 after completing a PhD in Computer Aided Design at CADCentre. This work became the basis of Toolmaker, a product that has been sold by the company since then.

In the mid-1980s the company collaborated with C&J Clark to write shoe design software until a dispute about the intellectual property rights over the product caused a falling-out. C&J Clark sued NC Graphics and won the case and NC Graphics was no longer able to develop or sell the shoe design software that they had been contracted to develop for C&J Clark.

NC Graphics focused on developing a surface modelling software product that used polynomial mathematics and was driven by human-readable input commands based on the APT language. The initial product was called Polyapt and was sold initially to manufacturing companies that specialised in producing lost wax dies for aerofoil and turbine engine blades.

In the late 1980s NC Graphics collaborated with Hurco whereby NC Graphics developed the software and Hurco marketed it worldwide. The product was marketed by Hurco as TDM3000 on a global exclusive basis. At the same time, the same fundamental source code was sold through a company in Aylesbury called VanDix and the product was marketed by them as the "VanDix" CADCAM system. Around 1990 NC Graphics and Hurco parted company after Hurco discovered that their global exclusivity agreement had been breached. Hurco obtained joint copyright to the software source code and continued to develop it before abandoning CADCAM development in the mid-1990s.

NC Graphics picked up the UK customer base from Hurco and sold what was to become "Toolmaker" until they were finally bought out by PTC some years later.

In 1993 the company formed a partnership with DEPO GmbH and began development of machining STRATEGIST, a graphical based system limited solely to generating 3-axis Cnc instructions. This product was resold by DEPO in Germany and sometimes the rest of the world under the brand name Depocam. machining STRATEGIST, was sold in the UK and some of the rest of the world, but Depocam and machining STRATEGIST were one and the same product marketed with a different brand name.

A finales de 2001, NC Graphics otorgó a Vero International Software una licencia para utilizar su software como núcleo de modelado geométrico para fabricación asistida por ordenador dentro de su sistema. En junio de 2002, compraron el producto de mecanizado STRATEGIST y el equipo de desarrollo por 1,25 millones de libras esterlinas, lo que dejó a NC Graphics con los derechos sobre su propia copia del código fuente y el producto Depocam. ^{[ 1 ]}

El negocio de NC Graphics estaba en declive, principalmente debido a que el producto Toolmaker estaba llegando al final de su ciclo de vida. Las ventas de Toolmaker se redujeron prácticamente a cero y el producto DepoCAM no era suficiente para generar los ingresos necesarios para mantener la empresa a flote. CNC Software obtuvo la licencia de la tecnología DepoCAM por 1.000.000 de dólares, y estos ingresos permitieron que NC Graphics siguiera adelante hasta la adquisición por parte de PTC.

El 16 de mayo de 2007, Parametric Technology Corporation adquirió NC Graphics de Arthur Flutter por 7,2 millones de dólares, ^{[ 2 ]} declarando que tenía 15 empleados en ese momento. ^{[ 3 ]} En su rueda de prensa, PTC confirmó que la tecnología de NC Graphics estaba licenciada a 5 de los 10 principales proveedores de CAM, incluyendo CNC Software (vendedores de MasterCAM ). ^{[ 4 ]} El producto Depocam se lanzará como Pro/TOOLMAKER 8.1 en agosto de 2007. ^{[ 5 ]}

El 1 de junio de 2009, el revendedor alemán del software y Arthur Flutter recompraron a PTC una licencia del código fuente de Depocam con derechos de explotación global completos y recontrataron a algunos de los empleados originales para continuar el desarrollo y el soporte del producto. ^{[ 6 ] [ 7 ]}

• Fabricante de herramientas
• ESTRATEGA de mecanizado (hasta junio de 2002)
• Apocalipsis

• Sitio web de NC Graphics