A record year for Pathtrace Engineering Systems of Reading as European sales rise 22 per cent and the company gained a top ten ranking in the 2001 CIM Data report. Countries such as Spain and the Czech Republic doubled their order intake, the German market increased sales by 65 per cent, Poland by a third and the home market in the UK grew by 20 per cent.

Brian Steatham managing director said: "We have invested heavily in developing the EdgeCAM product based on our strong production engineering background. At the same time, EdgeCAM has given our resellers a stronger product to sell to both the production machining and mould and die industries. We are also benefiting from the successful on-going training and product support we provide to our resellers."

Brian Steatham has successfully steered Pathtrace to fully integrate EdgeCAM with CAD files from all the major systems including SolidWorks, SolidEdge, Autodesk Inventor and Mechanical Desktop, CATIA and AutoCAD and now Pro/Engineer without the use of translators. This capability maintains true data integrity and allows the model's inherent intelligence to be used for toolpath creation and has proved to be an important factor in influencing customers to purchase.

With the increased frequency to upgrade EdgeCAM software, three times a year, the company is moving the development programme forward. Not only will this provide users with the highest productivity gains that can be made by using off-line technology, bit it will also put further market pressure on competitor products.

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