Molehills Out of Mountains : Optigraphics Puts Squeeze on Bulky Documents

Taking a detailed picture of an 80-foot oil exploration chart is not easy, but a young local company that specializes in scanning such documents and other large drawings for computer storage is filling a small but growing niche in the electronic imaging industry.

With few competitors in a relatively new and highly technical field, Optigraphics of San Diego has seen its sales grow 50% or more annually since its creation in 1985, said James Wylie, company founder and president.

Most of the documents scanned and stored by Optigraphics--from architectural plans for office buildings to engineering drawings for airplane parts--were created on paper, Wylie said. The company’s system also records documents that were created with computer-aided design but whose original data files have been erased.

Whatever their origin, these documents often present huge storage and access problems to the companies that own and use them. An Optigraphics system solves those problems by storing up to 10,000 large images on a single 12-inch optical disc, saving space and eliminating the necessity of shuffling through a storage room full of dusty drawings.

Documents are fed through am Optigraphics scanner that reads images and converts them into digital bits of data for storage on the disks. The scanners have from four to eight lenses and can accept documents up to 50 inches wide.

Since the documents are fed continuously through the machine to be scanned, one hair-thin line at a time, there is no limit to how long the drawing can be. Wylie said the machines have been used to store documents as long as 80 feet.

The company assembles its systems with components, some of which it makes and some of which it buys from outside suppliers. But 80% of the company’s work is creating the complicated software that analyzes, stores and retrieves the information, Wylie said.

Optigraphics’ systems range in price from $250,000 to $5 million, including the scanning and storage equipment, software and on-site training. The company so far has sold 200 complete systems at an average price of $500,000, Wylie said. Optigraphics’ contracts include a $2.5-million deal with Rockefeller Center in New York to scan and file the plans for its 19 buildings, Wylie said.

The company has also signed a $4-million deal with the government of Italy to record 40 million drawings of buildings in that nation, Wylie said. The files will help the Italian government calculate taxes based on square meters of floor space, he said. Both the Rockefeller Center and Italian government projects will take years to complete, he added.

If the current growth rate holds up, the company should post sales of more than $40 million for the year ending next June, Wylie said Monday.

James Breuer, a spokesman for the Assn. for Information and Image Management in Silver Spring, Md., said there are only a handful of companies in the nation that manufacture large document-scanning equipment, including 3M in St. Paul, Minn., and Formtech in Pittsburgh. Total industry sales, which are increasing at about 50% annually, totaled $540 million in 1988.

The most common use of the Optigraphics system is for storage of mundane engineering drawings, of everything from sewage treatment facilities to oil refineries. Wylie unrolled one document in a demonstration room, a 10-foot-long drawing of an aircraft part.

“See how hard it is to handle something like that?” Wylie said as he fumbled with the large document that covered a third of the small room.

Wylie started in the business as an electronics engineer in the early 1960s and later held several positions for Control Data. Although computer technology continues to change rapidly, Wylie said he has found a field that he believes will be strong for years.

The market for products and services offered by companies like Optigraphics was created by the widespread use of laser disks for computer storage, said Herbert F. Shantz, an electronic imaging consultant in Washington. The disks can store huge amounts of information and allow random access of documents, he said.

Images can also be stored on microfilm and magnetic tape, but they require time-consuming sequential searches, Shantz said.

Optigraphics designs and manufactures the systems at its 40,000-square-foot facility in Sorrento Valley. Wylie said the company is probably going to add 20,000 square feet of test and production space by the end of the year.

Although the company plans eventually to go public, Wylie said Optigraphics has not yet sold stock to the public because earnings have been consumed by heavy research and development costs, running at an average of 25% of gross revenues. The company has lost money every year except 1989, when it broke even, he said.

The company is now in a position to slow its investment in research and development, and will begin to make a profit this year, Wylie said.