ArchiCAD vs Revit...pros and cons + various

[Anonymous]

Gidday fellas

I was just curious on everybody's thoughts about Revit and ArchiCAD....I have used ArchiCAD and am getting better and better at it...but i do most of my drafting (my architecture firm) using Smart Architect with AutoCAD. I am a forth year architecture student and have been working in an architecture firm for the last 6 months- cant beleive how much I have learnt!

Anyway, my firm is thinking about purchasing a license for REVIT.. no one else in the firm has had experience with ArchiCAD (well as much as me anyhow) and I was just wondering what everybodys thoughts are on REVIT and ArchiCAD? I have gone through REVIT very briefly and what I have noticed is that ArchiCAD seems to be more of a presentation tool and REVIT more of a professional working drawing tool. Anybody have any other comments or thoughts on the 2 programs so that I could relay them back to my office directors? Whats easier/ etc etc?

Any info much appreciated

Cheers,

Andrew

[Chazz]

Lennox wrote:
I prefer AC, but the more I play with Revit, the more I am becoming impressed with it.

My typical gloom and doom prognostication is that AC is the past and Revit is the future. And that is scary, mostly because AC had such a fantastic lead and what did they do? They sat on it. The development over the years has been so painfully incremental, so plodding and obvious that it numbs the brain.

The greatest frustration about being married to AC is watching all the new software being invented or the previous stuff being totally reinvented while AC continues to look like something from the mid 90's. This software needs a sex appeal transplant. That AC could be swallowed up by the makers of such bland offerings as AutoCAD is just depressing. As I have said here before, this situation has come to pass in part thanks to the dual platform development. While the Windows port was undoubtedly necessary to the long term viability of the product GS seems to have made a pact when they ported to Windows that the software would never be fun to use under either OS. None of the stuff that makes the Mac great is utilized by GS, presumably because these things don't have Mircosoft equivalents. Thanks for the Spotlight Plugin but golly, what about system wide spell check, support for core image graphics, nextGen font handling or automator? Thank God GS couldn't find a way to disable Expose, I use it 20x a day. The end result is that we are left with the worst of both platforms. Let's not even get into multi processor support.....

Autocad had to be yucky old AutoCad because it was a tool for all the trades, not just architects. To some extent this is also true of Revit as we've seen with Revit Structures. ArchiCAD is different in that it is only for creative pros. As a member of that contingent, I'd like a little more creativity in my primary CAD tool. Come on GS, blow my mind.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Chazz wrote:

Lennox wrote:
I prefer AC, but the more I play with Revit, the more I am becoming impressed with it.

My typical gloom and doom prognostication is that AC is the past and Revit is the future.

I was feeling this way, out of frustration with some issues in ArchiCAD, until I began evaluating Revit 8.1 ... and now cannot see how one can claim one is the future and the other the past. They each do some things well and some things badly. IMHO, knowing where ArchiCAD is headed, I think ArchiCAD is still ahead.

I don't buy software because it looks sexy/flashy (as said elsewhere in your post), but because it makes me productive, is easy to use, and is compatible with a wide variety of other file formats.

Cheers,
Karl

[Rob]

They sat on it. The development over the years has been so painfully incremental, so plodding and obvious that it numbs the brain.

sadly, it's so true and I think this attitude in the AC development has become rather annoying among the users and that includes 'half-cooked' or 'quick-fixed' features and solutions. Each new version of AC actually feels like extended beta with tools half-way there not properly implemented (lightworks - it's a bad joke to have a hi-tech engine handling a radiosity, raytracing, atmospheric effects and we've got two library parts instead that 'will' do it all - how beautiful and excellent idea!!! - I mean, what a slack).
I am just tired of waiting on the next version straight after receiving the latest one hoping - hmmmm, next time they will do something really big... yes, like we didn't know...

[Chazz]

Karl wrote:
I don't buy software because it looks sexy/flashy

Maybe not, but here's the thing that gives me pause: The fact that AC does not take advantage of current technologies on my OS (I'm not even talking about Quartz Extreme or something, how about just file names longer than 31 characters?) makes me think that maybe the underpinnings and modularity of the code is not terribly robust. I'm no programer but I suspect this is why so many of the "new" features feel like extensions of things tried in earlier releases. Never is there something that really shifts the paradigm. All the recent releases leave one saying "finally! instead of WOW!


For example, Why should I have to manage all these links between AC and PM? Isn't that what computers are good at? Why do I need to explicitly tell AC that I need a site plan, 4 elevations and a few sections? why is it so hard to generate lists of things in my building? Why do I need to annotate things again and again when the thing itself knows what it is?

Karl, I don't want to put you in the position of GS apologist (and really I'm just riffing off your post) but I'm just amazed at the mediocrity we put up with as users. I'd like the bar set higher and while I'm at it, I'd like to incite a little more outrage..

The thing I hate more than anything else is that this software is so complex and hard to use. This means that many of us have spent half our professional lives mastering it --Which means we're loathe to switch to Revit or whatever --Which means few companies will be willing to risk such a development challenge --Which means that the companies that do make such a tool today don't have a fire under their butts to make it any better tomorrow. All of this inertia means that as an AC user I'm soooo glad that Revit is coming along. A war for dominance is heating up and it does not look good for GS. Want to know how this war might turn out? The clue to the future could be the past. In the long run this should be good for all of us.

Better stop here. Flame meter rising. Veins popping at temples.

[__archiben]

Chazz wrote:
Maybe not, but here's the thing that gives me pause: The fact that AC does not take advantage of current technologies on my OS (I'm not even talking about Quartz Extreme or something, how about just file names longer than 31 characters?) makes me think that maybe the underpinnings and modularity of the code is not terribly robust. I'm no programer but I suspect this is why so many of the "new" features feel like extensions of things tried in earlier releases. Never is there something that really shifts the paradigm. All the recent releases leave one saying "finally! instead of WOW!


For example, Why should I have to manage all these links between AC and PM? Isn't that what computers are good at? Why do I need to explicitly tell AC that I need a site plan, 4 elevations and a few sections? why is it so hard to generate lists of things in my building? Why do I need to annotate things again and again when the thing itself knows what it is?

... but I'm just amazed at the mediocrity we put up with as users. I'd like the bar set higher and while I'm at it, I'd like to incite a little more outrage..

The thing I hate more than anything else is that this software is so complex and hard to use. This means that many of us have spent half our professional lives mastering it --Which means we're loathe to switch to Revit or whatever --Which means few companies will be willing to risk such a development challenge --Which means that the companies that do make such a tool today don't have a fire under their butts to make it any better tomorrow. All of this inertia means that as an AC user I'm soooo glad that Revit is coming along. A war for dominance is heating up and it does not look good for GS. Want to know how this war might turn out? The clue to the future could be the past. In the long run this should be good for all of us.

Better stop here. Flame meter rising. Veins popping at temples.

worth quoting the whole lot. i'm 100% behind you more than you will ever know . . .

i think it's also worth extracting this image from your link and displaying it for as many GS employees as possible to see . . .

cheers
~/archiben

[TomWaltz]

~/archiben wrote:
worth quoting the whole lot. i'm 100% behind you more than you will ever know . . .

i think it's also worth extracting this image from your link and displaying it for as many GS employees as possible to see . . .

cheers
~/archiben

You rock!! Love the image.... I give it a "10"

[Anonymous]

I do think that we do all this talking because archicad just skipped a version. V9 was a no feature version. I have told it before. I do think it now after all the time i use it.

V10 will cover some of the gaps, but there are so many left, and we have to wait 2 more years.

I do insist that Archicad need BADLY a scripring environemnt.
Why? because MANY of the wished features can be scripted and not everyone can start learning the Archicad API.
A scripting environment would boost Archicad to the next level but... i guess we will have to wait.

[Rob]

V10 will cover some of the gaps, but there are so many left, and we have to wait 2 more years.

I am afraid so....

The clue to the future could be the past.

Excellent reading for GS product managers... good job mate!!!

[SeaGeoff]

Chazz wrote:
The thing I hate more than anything else is that this software is so complex and hard to use. This means that many of us have spent half our professional lives mastering it --Which means we're loathe to switch to Revit or whatever --Which means few companies will be willing to risk such a development challenge --Which means that the companies that do make such a tool today don't have a fire under their butts to make it any better tomorrow...

No truer word were ever spoken, err, written. You'll notice the nods of agreement coming from the seasoned trainers posting here, and as someone who performs internal ArchiCAD support and training in a small firm I absolutely concur. Despite all that ArchiCAD can do I see coworkers commonly model things in SketchUp and then produce 2D details in ArchiCAD, using none of the higher level features. These are talented and competent folks who came to our firm with no knowledge of either program. A bad sign. And I simply do not have the time, authority, or will to evangelize, then painstaking re-train, these good people. Largely because ArchiCAD is so complex, often inconsistent and unpredictable, and requires numerous workarounds just to achieve the graphics these people have come to expect from their 2D background with AutoCad or VectorWorks.

At this point Graphisoft had better hope people feel locked in and not waste the little bit of time that buys them the way they wasted all those years when they had basically no competition in this market.

And they had better hope Autodesk does not produce a Mac version of Revit.

[Anonymous]

I have to dissagree here.
I dont find archicad complex.
On the contrary i find it very intuitive.
It cannot be compared to sketchup because there for different targets.

I think that Archicad is as hard to learn as any other cad application.
For me the transition from autocad to archicad was about 10 days.
Just to get used to where feature A in acad is now in archicad.
Ofcourse skills are developing but beeing productive in archicad is not hard.

But now that i think, how many do you most of MS Word features?
Most use it like wordpad