RUCAPS (Really Universal Computer-Aided Production System) is a

computer-aided design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve c ...

(CAD) system for

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

s, first developed during the 1970s and 1980s, and today credited as a forerunner of

building information modeling Building information modeling (BIM) is an approach involving the generation and management of digital representations of the physical and functional characteristics of buildings or other physical assets and facilities. BIM is supported by vario ...

(BIM). It runs on

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is ...

s from

Prime Computer Prime Computer, Inc. was a Natick, Massachusetts-based producer of minicomputers from 1972 until 1992. With the advent of Personal computer, PCs and the decline of the minicomputer industry, Prime was forced out of the market in the early 1990s, ...

and

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

(DEC).

Development

The system was initially developed by two graduates of Liverpool University, Dr John Davison and John Watts in the early 1970s. They took their work to architects Gollins Melvin Ward (

GMW Architects GMW Architects was an architectural practice based in the United Kingdom. In August 2015, the firm was taken over by Scott Brownrigg. History The practice was established in 1947 by Frank Gollins (1910–1999), James Melvin (1912–2012) and Ed ...

) in London in the late 1970s, and developed it whilst working on a project for Riyadh University. It became the Really Universal Computer Aided Production System (RUCAPS), and from 1977 was sold through GMW Computers Ltd in several countries worldwide. The term 'building model' (in the sense of BIM as used today) was first used in papers in the mid-1980s: in a 1985 paper by Simon Ruffle, and later in a 1986 paper by Robert Aish - then at GMW Computers - referring to the software's use at London's Heathrow Airport.cited by Laiserin, Jerry (2008), Foreword to Eastman, C., ''et al'' (2008), ''op cit'', p.xii RUCAPS was a significant milestone in the development of building modellers, selling many hundreds of copies during the early 1980s when CAD was rare and expensive, and introducing thousands of architects to computer aided design. It is regarded as a forerunner to today's BIM software, and is seen by some writers, e.g.: Jerry Laiserin, as the inspiration behind

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that provides software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquarte ...

's Revit: RUCAPS was superseded in the mid-late 1980s by

Sonata In music a sonata (; pl. ''sonate'') literally means a piece ''played'' as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian ''cantare'', "to sing"), a piece ''sung''. The term evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms until th ...

, developed by former GMW employee

Jonathan Ingram Jonathan Ingram (born 23 June 1961) is an Australian inventor, businessman and author. He is particularly associated with development of early building information modelling (BIM) applications, including Sonata, Reflex and ProReflex - descr ...

. This was sold to T2 Solutions (renamed from GMW Computers in 1987), which was eventually bought by Alias, Wavefront but then "disappeared in a mysterious, corporate black hole, somewhere in eastern Canada in 1992." Ingram then went on to develop Reflex, bought out by Parametric Technology Corporation ( PTC) in 1996.

Comparison with BIM

In 1984, RUCAPS was described as a 2½

dimension In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus, a line has a dimension of one (1D) because only one coo ...

al interactive system, closer to the philosophy of 2D interactive systems such as ARK/2 or DAISY,Reynolds, R.A. (1984) ''Computer Methods for Architects'', Butterworths, London. pp 78-79. and concentrating on the rapid production of 2D drawings (plans,

elevation The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational equipotenti ...

s and sections). During the early 1980s, Ingram worked on a supplementary 3D file structure for RUCAPS, where, by running a separate program and with manual intervention, a flat 3D file could be generated, allowing the production of perspectives and images. RUCAPS did carry the 'weather vane' concept from UK-based Applied Research's Building Design System, BDS.

The system

RUCAPS was a building modelling system. It used the concept, introduced by BDS.

Notes and references

{{Building information modeling Building information modeling Computer-aided design software Construction industry of the United Kingdom Data modeling History of computing in the United Kingdom