PDMS (Plant Design Management System) as it is known in the
3D CAD industry, is a customizable, multi-user and multi-discipline, engineer controlled design software package for engineering, design and construction projects in offshore and onshore.
The Computer-Aided Design Centre (or CADCentre as it was more commonly referred to, and later formally became) was created in
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...
, England, UK in 1967 by the UK
Ministry of Technology
The Ministry of Technology was a department of the government of the United Kingdom, sometimes abbreviated as "MinTech". The Ministry of Technology was established by the incoming government of Harold Wilson in October 1964 as part of Wilson's am ...
. Its mission was to develop
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 ...
techniques and promote their take-up by British industry. The centre carried out much pioneering CAD research, and many of its early staff members went on to become prominent in the worldwide CAD community, such as brothers
Dick Newell
Richard G. Newell is a British businessman and technologist in the software industry in Computer aided design (CAD) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
Career
Newell holds degrees in Civil Engineering and Numerical Analysis and a PhD in Che ...
and
Martin Newell.
[
Dick Newell oversaw the creation of the Plant Design Management System (PDMS) for 3D process plant design. He later co-founded two software companies – Cambridge Interactive Systems (CIS) which was known for its Medusa 2D/3D CAD system, and ]Smallworld
Smallworld is the brand name of a portfolio of GIS software provided by GE Digital, a division of General Electric. The software was originally created by the Smallworld company founded in Cambridge, England, in 1989 by Dick Newell and others. ...
with its eponymous Smallworld GIS (Geographical Information System
A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and software that store, manage, analyze, edit, output, and visualize geographic data. Much of this often happens within a spatial database; however, this is not ...
). Martin Newell later went to the University of Utah
The University of Utah (the U, U of U, or simply Utah) is a public university, public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret (Book of Mormon), Deseret by the General A ...
where he did pioneering 3D solid modelling
Solid modeling (or solid modelling) is a consistent set of principles for mathematical and computer modeling of three-dimensional shapes '' (solids)''. Solid modeling is distinguished within the broader related areas of geometric modeling and ...
work; he was also one of the progenitors of PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...
.
Subsequently, the UK government, via the British Technology Group (BTG) established a separate company, Compeda Ltd, to exploit software developed and owned by the government and they took over the marketing and user support of PDMS, while the software continued to be developed by the CADCentre, with funding from Compeda.
When the UK government decided to privatise (sell) anything that did not need to be government owned, Compeda Ltd was sold to Prime Computer Inc. for a net negative sum of money. Prime Computer decided that PDMS had no commercial value or future and returned the marketing rights for the product to CADCentre.
CADCentre was privatised and in 2001 changed its name to AVEVA.
The latest release, as of March 2021, is AVEVA PDMS 12.1.SP5
AVEVA has introduced the latest version of PDMS is AVEVA Everything 3D (E3D). The current version of AVEVA Everything 3D is 2.1 (Expected to Launch 3.1 very soon)
AVEVA Everything 3D has been introduced with the new UI and with advanced functions. Ease of modelling, Quick Modelling functionality, More User friendly.
User Groups
Existing
Defunct
See also
* MPDS4
MPDS, the MEDUSA4, MEDUSA Plant Design System ( MPDS4 since 2006), is a suite of Plant Engineering, plant engineering applications for 2D/3D layout, design, and modeling of process plants, factories, or installations. The system's history is clos ...
External links
AVEVA Group website
References
Computer-aided design software
History of computing in the United Kingdom
Science and technology in Cambridgeshire
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