RUCAPS

RUCAPS (Really Universal Computer Aided Production System) was a computer aided design (CAD) system for architects, first developed during the 1970s and 1980s, and today credited as a forerunner of Building Information Modelling. It ran on minicomputers from Prime Computer and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

Development

The system was initially developed by two graduates of Liverpool University, Dr John Davison and Dr John Watts in the early 1970s. They took their work to architects Gollins Melvin Ward (GMW Architects) in London in the late 1970s, and developed it whilst working on a project for Riyadh University. It became the Really Universal Computer Aided Production System (RUCAPS), and from 1977 was sold through GMW Computers Ltd in several countries worldwide. It was amongst the leading systems of its time, selling many hundreds of copies at a time when CAD was rare and expensive. The term 'building model' (in the sense of BIM as used today) was first used in a 1986 paper by Robert Aish, then at GMW Computers, referring to the software's use at London Heathrow Airport's Terminal 3 - "the first program to use the concept of temporal phasing of construction processes" - and it is regarded as a forerunner to today's BIM software.