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OpenDWG Alliance Membership Reaches Two Thousand Mark

New Members, Leadership Signal Growing Acceptance of DWG as an Open Format for Exchanging CAD Drawings

For alliance information, contact:
OpenDWG Alliance Inc.
Asa Trainer
(206) 224-5655
atrainer@ptc.com

For press information, contact:
Waggener Edstrom
Rob Curran
(425) 637-9097
robc@wagged.com

New Members, Leadership Signal Growing Acceptance of DWG as an Open Format for Exchanging CAD Drawings

For alliance information, contact:
OpenDWG Alliance Inc.
Asa Trainer
(206) 224-5655
atrainer@ptc.com For press information, contact:
Waggener Edstrom
Rob Curran
(425) 637-9097
robc@wagged.com

SEATTLE — Mar. 30, 1998 — The OpenDWG Alliance announced today that since its founding on February 11, the number of OpenDWG Alliance members has grown to over two thousand participants as of March 23. The OpenDWG Alliance disclosed details regarding the status of its membership after convening its first board of directors meeting on March 23 in Seattle. An association of users and vendors and committed to the promotion of Autodesk's DWG drawing file format as an open industry standard for the exchange of computer aided design (CAD) drawings, the alliance to date has recruited twenty Founding members, 53 Sustaining members, and over two thousand Associate members from the CAD user community at large. The OpenDWG Alliance Web site at http://www.opendwg.org has been visited by over 18,000 individuals in the five weeks since the alliance was announced, with over 25 percent of the visitor traffic coming from outside the U.S.

At the March 23 meeting, the OpenDWG Alliance board of directors elected Asa Trainer of Parametric Technology Corp. as Chairman, Ted Johnson of Visio Corp. as President, Brent Straka of Eagle Point Software as Vice President, and Paul Richards of Visio Corp as Secretary/Treasurer. Matt Richards of Visio Corp. was appointed Chief Technologist. The alliance also admitted ANDOR Co., Ltd., Engineering Animation, Inc., Nacos Computer Systems Co., Inc., Rasterex International A.S., and ViaGrafix Corp. as new Founding members, and amended the organization's charter to offer Founding member status to new applicants indefinitely. The OpenDWG Alliance continues to recruit software vendors and CAD users to jointly share and disseminate knowledge about the composition of DWG, to date a proprietary undocumented format that encapsulates valuable CAD data created by governments, corporations and users worldwide.

"The growing number of Founding, Sustaining, and Associate members in the OpenDWG Alliance shows that there is a real need and demand in the CAD community for a better understanding of DWG, and for better quality tools for accessing the valuable data contained within DWG," said Asa Trainer, Chairman of the OpenDWG Alliance and product line manager, interface products at Parametric Technology Corp. "The OpenDWG Alliance isn't about making new or different DWG standards, because there can be only one DWG, and Autodesk defines it. The OpenDWG Alliance merely seeks to document and promote the DWG file format as it exists as an open standard."

"CAD users are telling us that the OpenDWG Alliance's efforts will help them to get more value out of the CAD data they own that's captured in the DWG format," said Brent Straka, vice president of the OpenDWG Alliance and vice president, marketing for Eagle Point Software. "The alliance is fully focussed on providing the information and tools that CAD users can draw upon when dealing with the DWG standard, be it for better DWG compatibility from vendors other than Autodesk, or for better custom software and free utilities for managing DWG files."

The OpenDWG Toolkit — C-language programming libraries that provide read and write access to DWG files — has been downloaded by over 1,800 alliance members for use in private and noncommercial applications. The Toolkit has already been incorporated by Associate alliance members into software tools now being made freely available to the CAD community at large.

"The OpenDWG Toolkit is a complex package, intended for CAD developers or users with software development expertise," said Matt Richards, chief technologist for the OpenDWG Alliance and DWG development manager at Visio Corp. "The number of OpenDWG Toolkit downloads that have occurred to date has been astonishing, given that it is not a pre-packaged application. This supports our belief in the widespread need for programming libraries that directly access the valuable data contained within DWG files, and hints of an even wider demand for complete DWG software tools that can make the drawing management chores of CAD users simpler and easier."

OpenDWG Alliance Structure and Membership Information
The OpenDWG Alliance has been structured as a nonprofit Washington state corporation. The alliance offers varying levels of participation for members: the Founding level, where members receive source code to the OpenDWG Toolkit and the right to incorporate the OpenDWG Toolkit into commercial products; the Sustaining level, reflecting members that intend to use the OpenDWG libraries within a commercial software product for resale, but do not receive source code; and Associate members, those members of the CAD user community that support the objectives of the alliance and who may choose to use the OpenDWG Toolkit for corporate or noncommercial purposes. A fifteen-member board of directors, elected annually by the Founding membership, oversees the alliance's activities and elects its officers. The first-year board consists of one representative from each of the alliance's fifteen original Founding members. Directors and officers are elected for one-year terms.

The OpenDWG Alliance continues to solicit membership in the alliance, provides information regarding the alliance and its activities, and distributes software based on OpenDWG technology via its Web site at http://www.opendwg.org/. The mailing address of the OpenDWG Alliance is OpenDWG Alliance, 1420 Fifth Ave., 22nd Floor, Seattle, WA 98101; telephone (206) 224-5655, fax (206) 224-2880.