Charles W. Hull Joins Paraform Board of Advisors; Co-Founder and Vice Chairman of 3D Systems Corporation Joins Silicon Valley 3D Software Start-Up.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 31, 1999--Paraform today announced that Charles W. Hull, the co-founder and vice chairman of 3D Systems Corp., has joined Paraform's board of advisors.

Hull joins several other pioneers on the Paraform advisory board from the academic, visual effects, industrial and automotive design communities. Further information is available via http://www.paraform.com/company/advisors.html.

Charles W. Hull is retired from, and remains vice chairman of 3D Systems Corp. in Valencia, Calif. He was president of 3D Systems from its inception in 1986 until 1997. Hull is the co-founder of the company as well as inventor of the solid imaging process known as stereolithography, and is widely regarded as the originator of today's rapid prototyping industry.

3D Systems Corp. (Nasdaq/NMS:TDSC) is a public company, headquartered in Valencia, Calif., with manufacturing in Colorado and subsidiaries in the U.K., France, and Germany.

The company markets its rapid prototyping systems, office concept model systems, and rapid tooling products worldwide to manufacturers in a wide spectrum of industries including aerospace, automotive, computer, electronic, consumer and medical.

Hull is a named inventor on 49 United States patents, plus numerous foreign patents, in the fields of ion optics and rapid prototyping.

"Mr. Hull brings a wealth of directly relevant experience and insight to our company," according to Brian Kissel, CEO of Paraform. "Rapid prototyping is a logical complement to Paraform's software solutions, and together these technologies offer a 'closed loop' approach to product design, manufacturing, and inspection. We're very excited to be working with a pioneer and thought leader in the industry."

"I'm really happy to be working with the innovative Paraform start-up team, and look forward to the impact this technology will have on design and manufacturing processes," stated Hull.

Building upon technologies developed over the last five years at Stanford University's Computer Graphics Lab, Paraform is able to add unsurpassed levels of structure and usability to 3D data.

With Paraform software, unstructured polygonal data can be intelligently restructured and parameterized into highly manipulable NURBS models, and seamlessly integrated with existing tools in design, analysis, manufacturing and visualization.

Paraform thereby enables the rapid and precise development of complex forms by leveraging unstructured data in a variety of formats, including 3D scan data, STL files, and existing model libraries.

Paraform has facilities in Palo Alto, Los Angeles and Detroit.

Further information is available via the Paraform website: http://www.paraform.com.