NC Graphics

NC Graphics was founded by Arthur Flutter in Waterbeach, Cambridge, England, in 1977 after completing a PhD in Computer Aided Design at CADCentre. This work became the basis of Toolmaker, a product that has been sold by the company since then. In the mid-1980s the company collaborated with C&J Clark to write shoe design software until a dispute about the intellectual property rights over the product caused a falling-out. C&J Clark sued NC Graphics and won the case and NC Graphics was no longer able to develop or sell the shoe design software that they had been contracted to develop for C&J Clark. NC Graphics focused on developing a surface modelling software product that used polynomial mathematics and was driven by human-readable input commands based on the APT language. The initial product was called Polyapt and was sold initially to manufacturing companies that specialised in producing lost wax dies for aerofoil and turbine engine blades. In the late 1980s NC Graphics collaborated with Hurco whereby NC Graphics developed the software and Hurco marketed it worldwide. The product was marketed by Hurco as TDM3000 on a global exclusive basis.