In a low key announcement, London W-based Logica Plc has released an upgrade of MacCad, its little known computer aided software engineering tool. Originally developed by Sesame, Logica’s own program for meeting in-house requirements, MacCad has been available since 1986, and has progressed from Version 3 to the current update, Version 5. The essential new features of Version 5 lie in its design dictionary which is user-defined. It keeps track of all the design objects in their various representations and enables a design to be partitioned amongst the various members of a team as well as providing a browsing capability. There are a number of pre-defined diagram variants with MacCad, including dataflow, structure, hierarchical and Yourdon RTS. MacCad runs on Macintosh Plus, SE and II and has MacVAX communi cations support so that it can be networked. At present, MacCad has a customer base of around 250 including Hatfield Polytechnic and other academic institutions, in addition to the Ministry of Defence and a number of software houses and engineering compa nies. The cost of MacCad 5 ranges from UKP750 for a single copy to UKP4,000 for an 11- to 20-user site licence, and upgrades from Version 4 start at UKP550. Educational establishments are eligible for special rates of UKP150 for upgrades, UKP350 for single copies and site licences at between UKP1,000 and UKP2,000.
