Boulder, Colorado-based Precision Visuals Inc has introduced version 4.0 of its graphics application, PV-Wave. Developed for the low end of the workstation market, PV-Wave is aim-ed at aerospace, geo-science, medical and financial markets, the company says. Version 4.0 operates as a command language for application developers wishing to integrate or migrate their own sub-routines into the environment, but there is a pointandclick module available for non-technical users. The company will also provide Montreal, Canada-based Visual Edge Technology Inc’s UIM/X front-end, based on the Open Software Foundation’s OSF/Motif graphical user interface, and a beefed-up hypertext on-line help system. Tabletools, a new suite of tools accompany PV-Wave, enables users to create hot links into relational database management system environments, and to draw off subset tables using SQL-like syntax.
Paste graphics
In addition, desktop publishing drivers have been added to PV-Wave so that users can paste graphics into electronic documents created at the desktop. PV-Wave will also include more complex statistical and mathematical analysis modules, stemming from its joint development agreement with the Oxford, UK-based Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd. Like its high-end counterpart, Advanced Visual Systems Inc’s Advanced Visualisation System see alongside PV runs on all major Unix-based workstations – Sun Microsystems Inc Sparcstation 10 and Digital Equipment Corp Alpha RISC versions are expected. With the graphics visualisation market apparently booming at present, Precision Visuals says it expects the company to report sales this year of $19.3m, up $2.5m from last year’s $16.8m. Describing the market as unquenchable, the managing director of Precision Visuals Ltd in the UK, Nick Lew-is, says that the European market is growing proportionately faster than that in the US. On general release from this month, PV-Wave 4.0 costs UKP4,000; the PV-Wave:NAG module starts at UKP700.
