"Necessity is the mother of invention," the saying goes. Sune Rydqvist had dealt with calculation problems throughout his career in the interior fittings and construction industries. In the mid-1980s, AutoCAD entered the market. But the software and related modules didn’t work well as calculation tools – they could only sum up the number of symbols placed in the drawing area. AutoCAD tools also proved too costly and complicated for sales functions.

Sune sought the technology counsel of his son, Göran Rydqvist, and friend Johan Lyreborn, both of whom had graduated with Master of Engineering degrees in Computer Technology from the Linköping Institute of Technology. During their postgraduate studies, their research produced a new programming language and software applications – a language that could help to solve the problem of selling configurable products. The result was the first PGC prototype: an intuitive program using point-and-click to draw panel layouts and in the background would calculate the changes to ensure accuracy.