By Randall S. Newton
Editor-in-Chief
The new tips-and-tricks website for MicroStation users, www.microstationtips.com, is owned and operated by Axiom International, a developer of MicroStation utilities, yet this important information is mentioned nowhere on the site.
Visitors are encouraged to sign up for email updates. The response sent to acknowledge the sign-up does not identify Axiom as the site owner.
As of today there are 39 tips on the website. The majority are anonymously contributed, but a few come from other MicroStation resources, including ControlAltDelete magazine and Zen Engineering.
Axiom International, based in Clearwater, Florida, is the largest third-party developer of add-on products for MicroStation. There are currently 28 products in its portfolio. The privately held company was founded by David Greenbaum in 1984 to serve users of Intergraph’s VAX-based IGDS CAD software. The company introduced FileFixer for MicroStation in 1998, a product which continues to be among its best-sellers. Greenbaum continues today as CEO.
“[We are] not hiding the fact, but not broadly promoting it,” responded Axiom marketing manager Frank Mullins when asked about the website’s sponsorship. “We wanted to give the MicroStation community a place to get info on MicroStation and not soil it with any advertising, as a gesture of anonymous goodwill.”
Axiom is known in the CAD add-on vendor community for its powerful direct marketing operation. As stated on the Axiom website, the company “owns and maintains one of the most complete databases of MicroStation users in the world. Regular mailings with returned address corrections maintain its accuracy. Brief notes on each communication between an Axiom employee and a customer are maintained in this same database to help the company provide consistently accurate and efficient customer service to the MicroStation community.”