History

The litigation animation business started in the late 1980's and was inspired by the vision of two Iowa State University professors, Dr. Jim Bernard and Dr. Marty Vanderploeg. Both men were professors in the Mechanical Engineering College at ISU.

As experienced experts in ground vehicle litigation, Dr. Bernard and Dr. Vanderploeg were often frustrated with the difficulties of accurately conveying complicated concepts and ideas with existing tools and techniques.

This led to their development of proprietary animation and simulation software specifically geared for the litigation industry. The emphasis was to demonstrate scientifically accurate representations of actual events for the courtroom.

A predecessor company, Engineering Animation, Inc. (EAI) was created in 1987 by Dr. Bernard and Dr. Vanderploeg to commercialize on this software developed in conjunction with Iowa State University.

EAI rapidly grew to become the industry leader in this new field and represented the industry standard during its corporate lifetime. EAI went public in 1996 and eventually agreed to be purchased by Unigraphics Solutions (UGS) in 2000.

Shortly after the purchase, UGS sold the litigation animation division to key EAI managers and Demonstratives, Inc. (DI) was formed on January 1, 2001.

Since its inception, DI has continued to expand its capabilities in providing a broad range of visual scientific support in complicated litigation matters.

In November of 2006 DI moved into its present office space located at 2321 North Loop Drive in Ames, Iowa. This is part of the ISU Research Park where the industry was created almost two decades earlier.