The agreement between Fujitsu Ltd and McDonnell Douglas Information Systems Ltd on computer-aided design software (CI No 1,600) is an earnest of how determined the Japanese company is to build a major business out of high-end design software – it was the unsuccessful bidder for Cadam Inc and IBM is believed to have paid way over the odds for Cadam to prevent it falling to Fujitsu: under the agreement, Fujitsu will offer McDonnell’s Unigraphics CAD/CAM software on its own hardware, and McDonnell will market two Fujitsu products outside Japan – a two-dimensional computer aided design system and a circuit board layout system; McDonnell has also licensed its Parasolid three dimensional solid modeller to Fujitsu and agreed joint development.
