An albeit 'Off Topic' bit of trivia... 4

[JohnRBaker]

It was exactly 36 years ago today, August 8, 1977, that I sat down in front of a Unigraphics (AKA NX) workstation for the very first time when the company I worked for at the time, Baker Perkins (no relation) in Saginaw, MI, sent 6 people to Carson, CA to take a Basic UG class after purchasing a 3 seat system of UG.

Three years later, I left BP and went to work for McDonnell Douglas, who by then had completely absorbed United Computing, the original developers of UG, into their automation group, McAuto, and they were looking for people to do demos and benchmarks. And as they say, the rest is history.

Unigraphics/NX looked a bit different back then, both in terms of the hardware and the user interface:

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[jerry1423]

. . . and he lived happily ever after.

 

[MickyV007]

Congratulations John!

Best regards,

Michaël.

NX7.5.4.4 + TC Unified 8.3
Win 7 64 bit (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5650 @2.67GHz)
24.0 GB
NVIDIA Quadro 4000 + NVIDIA Tesla C2050

 

[carlharr]

If the forum had a "like" button I'd click it.

http://www.jcb.com

NX 7.5 with TC 8.3

 

[Dave K]

and people call me a long time NX user, you have a good 13-14 years on me!

-Dave

NX 7.5

 

[jerry1423]

He has a few years on me. i have been a constant UG/NX user since 1990.

 

[looslib]

John has about 10 years on me. I started with UG2 V3.2 on one of the first Vax/GPX ionstallations of UG. My order with MDISCO was listed as spcl-1, spcl-2 for the main GPX and the diskless satellite, 9MB memory in the boot box and 5MB in the second. Installation was done in late July 1987. I had been working on getting the system for almost 2 years before this time, but the budget wasn't there. Finally with the GPXs, the software, HP5896 plotter, dot matrix printer and Seiko screen dump unit getting in for under $100K management let us get the systems. Spent 7 weeks over 3 months in St. Louis in training classes.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[loki3000]

congratulations, john.

please post some more pictures of the early nx user interface.

somewhat offtopic too:
MickyV007, why do you have a Quadro AND a Tesla in your computer? they can perform same functions (quadro can gpgpu and drive cad software)

 

[JohnRBaker]

If you select the last link below my 'signature', you'll be taken to the 'The Unigraphics Virtual Museum' where you can find tons of info about the early days of Unigraphics (there's also a connection on the page to something similar about the early days of SDRC) including lots of pictures.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[nxprog]

Congrats John!...On that day I was probably trekking thought the woods catching crayfish, minnows and frogs, at the same time regretting my fast approaching first day of the fourth grade.

NX 6.05.3/7.5.5/8.0/8.5

 

[cjccmc]

I remember the 1990's version of UG. All the workstations were in dark rooms. Had the cool joystick with the pick button on top. You got to know the function button combinations (e.g. parallel at a distance) so well that you could hammer them in like a typist, then wait for the machine to catch up LOL.

 

[Xwheelguy]

Congrats, John. 36 years ago, I was in elementary school and hadn't even sat in front of computer.

Tim Flater
NX Designer
NX 8.0.3.4
Win7 Pro x64 SP1
Intel Xeon 2.53 GHz 6GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro 4000 2GB

 

[SDETERS]

Heck I was one year old. Probably learning my first words. Wow the Technology has come a long way!!!

 

[BOPdesigner]

Somebody needs to update the museum. Update the present day to now, and finish off the 2000's era.

 

[RyanVLee]

Congrats John You are a great assist to the community. 36 years is 3 years before I was a born. I started at 20 on v17 and it looked nothing as cool as the old stations. Good luck and keep up the the great work

Ryan Lee
Design Engineer

If you can think it it can be modeled

 

[RUGmechanic]

+1 !

Older budweiser
NX8.5 64bit, hp z820

 

[potrero]

Congratulations John. You're a tremendous asset to the NX community, with your deep understanding of how the product functions, not only in the present, but informed from its past and with a good eye toward its future. Thanks for putting so much effort into helping others.

 

[JohnRBaker]

For those of you who have asked for something to show how Unigraphics used to work, I've got a couple of old marketing videos that you can watch. The first film was produce in 1978 by United Computing Corporation, the company that originally developed Unigraphics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9F5zIKuLBw

The second video is from a film produced in 1982 by McAuto (McDonnell Douglas Automation Company) by then the company developing, selling and supporting Unigraphics, after their final acquisition of United Computing in the fall of 1979. If you watch carefully at about the 16:15 point you'll see the back of my shirt and head. As part of the team responsible for the technical content of the film, most of the on-screen images of models and drawings, except for those which were provided by the various companies mentioned in the film, were created by myself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shEXiKlf3Vg

Enjoy...

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[kukelyk]

Great videos, give us more please!


----
kukelyk

 

[markrief]

John, I remember seeing the those movies when they first came out. The joys of setting up a film projector. Thanks for making them available.

Since everyone is making John feel so old, I'll share that I am only a year behind John. When he sat down in Carson, I was still using UNIAPT at school, and didn't use Unigraphics until my first post-college job a year later.

John, thanks for all you contributions!


Mark Rief
Product Manager
Siemens PLM