IGC has a long legacy of innovating industry firsts, starting with creating the first multi-format CAD viewer back in 1991, followed by the first viewer for Windows. Our mission is to help our customers be more responsive and find more efficient ways to get things done with less effort. Our focus on innovation comes with a sense of purpose and always with the customer in mind.

Some of our great feature innovations, like a magnified view for large-scale drawings, came from listening carefully to customers. For example, IGC was the first company to create web-based PDF annotations, even before Adobe! Through creative API usage and engineering, IGC created the first web-based viewer that enabled PDF annotations for an enterprise content management deployment.

Here are a few other notable innovations in IGC history:

Innovative Viewing.

First multi-format CAD Viewer — IGC pioneered the multi-format CAD viewer offering.   It was the first viewer technology to handle the complexities of both vector and raster based content formatting.

Web-based, Multi-format Viewer — IGC saw early on that the Web was revolutionizing how companies pushed software to their users, and created the industry's first web-based, multi-format viewer, offering both Java and ActiveX versions. Along with this new foray into server-based viewing, IGC created the first viewer to use transactional processing so it could support more users per server, and the first web viewer with page serving, cache handling, a thin client, and distributed processing.

First with Page Streaming – Well actually, technology acquired by IGC was first but IGC quickly recognized the significance of page based viewing for network efficiency, content security, and overall user experience performance years ago.  We built on the concept  to support  the complexities of local full document printing, and doing text searching and term hit highlighting in a client / server processing model that is transactional based.

Annotation for Process Efficiency.

XML Markups — IGC recognized the need for an open markup format based on XML, to remove customer risk by having content that is open to get to. XML markups also allow companies to pre and post process annotations as part of a workflow process. Annotation adds value to business process, and IGC was the first viewing company to engineer annotation tuned to improve business communication process.

Metadata-Driven Print Banners and Stamps — In response to quality standards like ISO9000, IGC was the first company to offer metadata-driven watermarks and print banners, a concept we later expanded to include bi-directional, metadata-based stamps with fields for information pulled from the database and fields that push user-added information back to the database.

Error-Proof Change Review — Our early customer base was largely manufacturing, so we innovated a key annotation review concept called Changemarks® that permits step-by-step review of markup communications. It allows comments to be accessed directly by simply clicking "Next," or by searching for a keyword, or by filtering by date, author, or topic. Changemarks can be exported and included in both picture and comment form in Word documents, Outlook emails, and web pages, so no additional software is needed to enable review.

Easy Revision Comparison — Our customers needed a way to easily verify all requested changes were accurately made so we came up with side-by-side an overlay compare features that highlight additions and/or deletions and allows markups to be overlaid on the image.

Eye on Content Security.

Content Security — IGC was first to recognize the need for content security with Visual Rights®, and first to integrate with IRM technologies for tethered security.

Redaction — We were first to provide pattern based redaction that can be implemented as a template or a recorded script. IGC was also first to provide detailed logging of what was redacted by whom when and what steps were taken to redact information, what reasons where used on what files.

User Experience.

The “Just Works” Experience — IGC was first to understand that a multiple format viewer needs to be smart and adapt to the content type to give the user the “just works” experience. An example is opening a document ready to read and opening a CAD drawing ready to zoom.

Text-Searchable Views — We recognized the need for accurate viewing of documents with full text searching. So we acquired the first print based publishing technology for accurate text searchable page rendering (jDocs) in a web browser and then greatly improved it.

Fidelity Checker — We engineered an in-house technology called “fidelity checker” whose purpose is to test hundred of thousands files in various formats graphically for render accuracy.

Simply put—we innovate.

We jump into new technologies and love building really cool stuff that is easy, works well and does highly useful things. We have new versions of our software and new product offerings coming that we hope will continue in our legacy of “firsts."