Colin Beames: Computer-Aided Design

"In the early 80s, we were part of British Shipbuilders, and they had a view that all their shipyards should use CAD. CAD is Computer-Aided Design, basically electronic draughting as it was in those days, and they chose a 3d system from Computervision. It was very complicated to use and the performance of the computers was poor to say the least - unreliability was a challenge, you regularly had to re-boot systems. We wrote a lot of software to improve the efficiency of the system. There was the core software from Computervision, but we customised around the edges of it. We spent quite a lot of time working with them to enhance it, to make it a shipping system because it really was something borne out of the motor industry. The first job we did was to draw some standard bunks for the MOD, and when we got through that project, we moved into a Single Role Minehunter which was the first ship that was ever modelled in 3d for its entirety anywhere in the world. So we were really breaking new ground."