Matra Datavision SA of Paris, France has announced that it has concluded separate agreements with NEC Corp and Otsuka Shokai Co, a major Japanese personal computer trading company, for sales in Japan of its Euclid-IS computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering software. The software has been implemented for the MIPS Computer Systems Inc RISC-based models of the NEC 4800 workstation, and will be available through both NEC and Otsuka Shokai, with NEC concentrating on direct sales to larger customers that may be downsizing from mainframes to workstation-based computer-aided design, while Otsuka Shokai will explore those customers that are upgrading from personal computer systems. NEC hopes to sell 400 systems in the next three years, while Otsuka Shokai expects to achieve 600 sales. The sales will kick off this month at the second CIM Japan 91 exhibition. Michel Neuve-Eglise, president of Matra Datavision, said as background to Matra’s introduction of its new partners that the mechanical CAD market where Euclid is targeted is currently valued at $9,500m worldwide, with the Japanese market alone being $2,200m. Matra, with its new distributors’ help, hopes to gain 20% of the Japanese market. It has already sold 100 systems in the five years since establishment of a wholly-owned subsidiary in Japan – a point that NEC brought up in Matra’s favour when talking about why the agreement was concluded. NEC admitted for its part that while it has had its own computer-aided design product on the 4800 workstation series, it was limited in function compared to Euclid, being two-dimensional only. Euclid is the product of French research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and was first offered as a product in 1979. With subsequent investment and technology sharing from Renault SA, the product emerged in its current form with modules for both solid and surface modelling and the machining interface. Sold mainly on Digital Equipment Corp VAXes under VMS to date, a Unix version was launched last year. The B&I Systems Development Sales Division of Sony Corp and Nippon Silicon Graphics Inc have signed a value-added reseller agreement for sales of a high-definition computer graphics system that will be configured from Sony’s high-definition television monitors and video systems together with Silicon Graphics’ high-end Iris 4D PowerVision model; the price of the system has not been announced, but Sony hopes to sell 100 systems per year; Silicon Graphics workstations are popular in Japan for applications such as architectural design and walkthrough simulation, computer graphics and CAD/CAM, and some 2,500 of the machines have already been shipped.
