CAD/CAM software company Unigraphics Solutions Inc has agreed to acquire Applicon Inc, the Ann Arbor, Michigan mechanical design, manufacturing and data management software development firm.
Applicon has been in the CAD/CAM market since 1969 and has around 200 staff in the US, France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK. It was acquired by the Gores Technology Group in 1993. Last year it acquired Cimplex Corp for its numeric control software and introduced version 7 of its flagship Bravo software line. Bravo was designed to manage very large assemblies comprised of thousands of parts, for the design of products such as printing presses, aircraft landing gear, off-shore drilling platforms, textile machinery, ships, and submarines. It can import 2D and 3D CAD geometry from other packages.
Unigraphics was spun out of Electronic Data Systems Corp in 1996, and went public last year (CI No 3,436). Last month, the company agreed to acquire Germany’s dCADE GmbH of Berlin, a developer of automotive process automation and simulation software which will be run as part of its Unigraphics GmbH operation. Its four main brands are the Unigraphics high-end CAD/CAM/CAE line, the iMAN product data management tool, Parasolid 2D CAD system and Solid Edge modeling tools.
