Grace's Guide To British Industrial History

Registered UK Charity (No. 1154342)

Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 167,643 pages of information and 247,064 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 147,919 pages of information and 233,587 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

AVEVA Group

From Graces Guide

AVEVA Group plc is a British multinational company headquartered in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It provides engineering design, information management solutions, and CAD/CAM software along with technology consulting services for the Plant, Power and Marine industries.

1967 The Computer-Aided Design Centre (or CADCentre as it was more commonly known) was created in Cambridge by the Ministry of Technology. Its mission was to develop computer-aided design techniques and promote their take-up by British industry. Its first director was Arthur Llewelyn who initially contracted out the recruitment and management of specialist staff to ICL.

CADCentre 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 and Martin Newell:

  • Dick Newell oversaw the creation of the Plant Design Management System (PDMS) for 3D process plant design, and later co-founded two software companies – Cambridge Interactive Systems (CIS), which was known for its Medusa 2D/3D CAD system, and Smallworld with its eponymous Smallworld GIS (Geographical Information System).
  • Martin Newell later went to the University of Utah where he did pioneering 3D-solid modelling work; he was also one of the progenitors of PostScript.

Along with the Cambridge Science Park, CADCentre was one of the original companies involved in what became known as the Cambridge Phenomenon – the transformation of Cambridge from a University town into one of the world's high technology centres within a few years in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

1983 CADCentre became a private company and was sold to a consortium led by ICL [1]

1993 CADCentre received the Queen's Award for Export Achievement.

1994 A management buyout of the company

1996 Became a publicly quoted company.

1998 CADCentre acquired the 3D design software customer base of AEA Technology.

2001 It changed its name to AVEVA.

2010 World’s first automatic generation of finite-element models from 3D marine product models.

2014 AVEVA recognised as Britain's Most Admired Company in the Software and Computer Services sector.

See Also

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Sources of Information

  1. The Times, Apr 02, 1983