Calma Company, based in Sunnyvale, California, was, between 1965 and 1988, a vendor of digitizers and minicomputer-based graphics systems targeted at the cartographic and electronic, mechanical and architectural design markets.

In the integrated circuit industry jargon of 2008, "GDS II" referred no longer to the computer system, but to the format itself.

UTI took a hands-off approach to managing its acquisition, allowing Calma to continue largely unchanged on its growth path.

Due partly to a mass exodus of talent after GE moved its own people into key management positions, partly due to excessive expectations, the changing nature of the market and the inherent difficulty of keeping up with rapidly changing technology, these ambitions went largely unrealized.

In the UTI acquisition of Calma in 1978, 5% of the newly issued stock was held in escrow as a reserve pending the outcome of this litigation.

Somewhat later, an additional building to the rear (on San Gabriel Drive) was leased as a manufacturing/shipping area, bringing total square footage to 35,000.

In February 1978, the company relocated to a 67,000-square-foot (6,200 m2) single-story building at 527 Lakeside Drive in Sunnyvale, part of the newly developed Oakmead Village industrial park.

In 1979, the R&D department moved to a building at 212 Gibraltar Drive (corner of Borregas Avenue) in the Moffett Park area of Sunnyvale.

[14]: 3D In 1984 Calma bought a 108,000 square feet (10,000 m2) facility near Dublin, Ireland, that had originally been built for Trilogy Systems.

Most of the systems sold are constructed by combining available components to meet the requirements of the customers' specific design or drafting application.

Calma's systems enable customers to automate a wide variety of design and manufacturing processes which have previously been performed manually.

Their GDS I and II software operated on Data General Corporation's Nova and Eclipse line of 16 bit mini Computers.

Sketches or layouts of electronic system were first manually drawn on mylar or paper to scale and were placed on large backlit 48 by 60 inch table digitizers.

Printed Circuit Boards (PCB's) and Small Scale Integrated Circuits (SSIC) were manually traced buy an operator, usually a draftsman or electronic engineer then plotted on a large pen plotter (In later years to faster Electrostatic Plotters) to be visually inspected to confirm that the physical layout properly matched the schematic.

Once the layout and schematics final edits were manually checked to confirm their accuracy, the multiple layers of the physical circuitry were sent to a film plotter to create masks for fabrication.

These components are interfaced with Calma-designed and manufactured controllers, and integrated into a single unit with system software designed and programmed by Calma.

An operator station consists of a digitizing device, an interactive cathode ray tube (CRT) display unit, coordinate readouts and a keyboard.

This ushered in the new method of "online design", where the drafting employees actually sat at the screen and drew the chips.

The General Motors Central Foundry Division (GM-CFD) had applied DDM to the design of castings and tooling for automotive components such as engine blocks, cylinder heads and steering knuckles.

DDM was run on Calma's proprietary dual-monitor workstation hardware connected to Data General Nova and later Digital VAX 11/780-series computers.