when I started with microstation we had unix terminals boasting a marvellous 32K, they were connected by a 10kbit router to the mainframe in our office 60 miles away, everyone in the company connected to this, we could noticeably slow the entire system by doing a search on all 3 workstations (£32,000 each) things slowly got better and faster, until the day we got a 386 pc that ran the CAD, this was slower then the current unix machines, but was stand alone.
progress was made and my department inherited some of the old cad machines, along with these we got 2 servers (each the size of a filing cabinet) boasting 5 x 1Gb hard drives each, we also inherited the 4th full format scanner ever made (original cost £250,000) and boy do I wish I had kept some of the 12 linear cameras mounted inside that.
on a side note I have been getting along with freeship, working out how it works, my hull is in, just smoothing those curves out now, as a program, for someon with experience of CAD its quite easy to ick up once you find the controls you want.
Grendel