CERN to use InterCAP 'ActiveCGM' products for Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collaboration.

ANNAPOLIS, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 23, 1997--InterCAP Graphics Systems Inc., confirmed Friday that CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics and the birthplace of the World Wide Web, will use InterCAP's ActiveCGM Author(TM) and ActiveCGM Browser(TM) products for the creation and distribution of technical graphics content associated with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project.

The LHC is an accelerator which will bring protons into head-on collision at higher energies than ever achieved before to allow scientists to penetrate still further into the structure of matter and recreate the conditions prevailing in the Universe just after the "Big Bang."

LHC will be built astride the Franco-Swiss border west of Geneva at the foot of the Jura mountains.

CERN exists primarily to provide European physicists with accelerators that meet research demands at the limits of human knowledge.

In the quest for higher interaction energies, the Laboratory has played a leading role in developing colliding beam machines.

Notable "firsts" were the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) proton-proton collider commissioned in 1971, and the proton-antiproton collider at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), which came in 1981 and produced massive W and Z particles two years later, confirming the unified theory of electromagnetic and weak forces.

"Distributing LHC design data to the hundreds of physicists, engineers and technicians at CERN and in all the collaborating Institutes on the 5 continents is a challenge," said Marcel Mottier of CERN.

"Despite the possibilities offered by key word searches, the result is not always satisfactory: either the required drawing is not found or so many are found that a new search with more selective criteria is necessary.

"ActiveCGM offers a new way to access the drawings database with links between related drawings and between a drawing's feature (a component name or its graphic representation) and other documentation.

"The set of linked drawings and documents can then be graphically navigated to find the required information, eliminating the need of keyword searches. We plan to use this technique to keep track of the equipment installed in the 27km long LHC tunnel."

"The whole machine can be represented by a set of 550 layout drawings prepared semi-automatically with CAD," explained Mottier. "This set is used as a kind of railway track to move along the tunnel to a particular location.

"Once there, it is possible to access more detailed information about machine components such as design and operating parameters, installation information, maintenance and so on."

The main focus for CERN at present is with the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP), where measurements unsurpassed in quantity and quality are testing the best description of sub-Nature, the Standard Model, to a fraction of 1% soon to reach one part in a thousand.

In keeping CERN's cost-effective strategy of building on previous investments, it is designed to share the 27-kilometre LEP tunnel, and be fed by existing particle sources and pre-accelerators.

A challenging machine, the LHC will use the most advanced superconducting magnet and accelerator technologies ever employed.

InterCAP, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intergraph Corp., established its technical leadership in Web-based CGM products through its MetaLink technology, on which the ActiveCGM products are based.

ActiveCGM Author adds value to existing legacy graphics as well as newly authored technical art by producing "intelligent graphics" complete with hotspot hyperlinks and animation. ActiveCGM Browser allows viewing and navigating of intelligent CGM graphics in Web-based applications.

ActiveCGM is a family of profiles of the international standard for computer graphics metafiles (ISO/IEC 8632: 1992, commonly called the CGM standard).

The standard defines how to encode 2D vector and raster graphics into compact, efficient files ideal for publishing on the Internet.

CGM has been a registered media type (image/cgm) for the Internet and the World Wide Web since December 1995 and literally hundreds of graphics and CAD applications can currently produce and read CGMs.

The ActiveCGM profile family defines a methodology for adding hyperlinks, animation and other intelligence to standard CGM graphics. It is intended to leverage the extensive existing support for the CGM standard by defining how to "activate" CGM graphics so they can be easily published on the WWW.

"We are pleased to be associated with CERN and a project as important as the LHC," said Dorothy Weatherby, general manager at InterCAP. "We see this as further confirmation that our products will continue to be accepted at even the highest levels of technical requirements."

CERN Background Information

CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, Turkey, the European Commission and Unesco have observer status.

InterCAP Background Information

InterCAP Graphics Systems Inc., based in Annapolis, was founded in 1987 and became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intergraph Corp. early in 1995.

A leader in the development of graphics software for electronically creating, editing and managing technical illustrations, InterCAP is a major supplier of graphics software for the DoD JCALS standard publishing solution, as well as for Northrop/Grumman's J-STARS, Boeing-Bell-Allison V-22, and Lockheed Martin F-22 interactive electronic technical manuals (IETMs) for field maintenance.

InterCAP also offers a complete range of graphics software for the authoring and presentation of graphics content on the WWW.

InterCAP, the InterCAP logo, and ActiveCGM are registered trademarks of InterCAP Graphics Systems Inc. Other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners. InterCAP can be reached at www.intercap.com .

CONTACT: InterCAP Graphics Systems Inc.

Ronn Dale Wiehler, 410/224-2926

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http://www.intercap.com