Sonata was a 3D building design software application developed in the early 1980s and now regarded as the forerunner of today's building information modelling applications. Sonata was commercially released in 1986, having been developed by Jonathan Ingram independently and was sold to T2 Solutions (renamed from GMW Computers in 1987 - which was eventually bought by Alias, Wavefront), and was sold as a successor to GMW's RUCAPS. It ran on workstation computer hardware (by contrast, other 2D

CAD 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 co ...

systems could run on personal computers). The system was not expensive, according to Michael Phiri. Reiach Hall purchased "three Sonata workstations on Silicon Graphics machines, at a total cost of approximately £2000 each" 990 prices Approximately 1000 seats were sold between 1985 and 1992. However, as a BIM application, in addition to geometric modelling, it could model complete buildings, including complex parametrics, costs and staging of the construction process. ArchiCAD founder Gábor Bojár has acknowledged that Sonata "was more advanced in 1986 than ArchiCAD at that time", adding that it "surpassed already the matured definition of 'BIM' specified only about one and a half decade later".In Appendix 6: Letter to the author, p. 281, . A large number of projects were designed and built using Sonata including Peddle Thorp Architect's

Rod Laver Arena Rod Laver Arena is a multipurpose arena located within Melbourne Park, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The arena is the main venue for the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tennis tournament of the calendar year. History Replacing ...

in 1987, and Gatwick Airport North Terminal Domestic Facility by

Taylor Woodrow Taylor Woodrow was one of the largest housebuilding and general construction companies in Britain. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index until its merger with rival George Wimpey to create Ta ...

. The US-based architect HKS used the software in 1992 to design a horse racing facility ( Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie,

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

) and subsequently purchased the successor product, Reflex. The Sonata business was founded in 1984 and, by one account it "disappeared in a mysterious, corporate black hole, somewhere in eastern Canada in 1992," after new owner Alias Research discontinued marketing of the product.Weisberg, David (2008), ''The Engineering Design Revolution: The People, Companies and Computer Systems That Changed Forever the Practice of Engineering''. Chapter 16. Availabl
online
Retrieved: 17 October 2015 Ingram then went on to develop

Reflex In biology, a reflex, or reflex action, is an involuntary, unplanned sequence or action and nearly instantaneous response to a stimulus. Reflexes are found with varying levels of complexity in organisms with a nervous system. A reflex occur ...

, bought out by Parametric Technology Corporation ( PTC) in 1996.

References

Data modeling Computer-aided design software Construction Architecture Building engineering software Building information modeling {{business-software-stub