From Vectorworks to Archicad?

[Anonymous]

Hello, I am considering switching from Vectorworks Architect (International) to Archicad.

Can anyone share a similar experience?
Where did you have most difficulties?
Are there different language versions including localized packages?

I am an European architect in DE, standard praxis, BIM Professional (TU München). I can use Vectorworks well (maintained for years a programming site for Vectorscript and such things) and would love to learn GDL too, at one point.

[Anonymous]

You never work in the layout in Archicad. All work is done right next to the geometry.
Typically you would do different dimensions in different scales. They will reside on their own layers. Hiding and showing things is determined by the display attribute of the layer the object is on.
In the layout you place the drawings ("views") and then you can cut them into place there.

Perfect, just what I wanted to know. We'd call the hot linking Referencing, I think.

[Brett Brown]

Terms are obviously different, why the question was asked, so I could understand your statement. We would call those standard tools.
Archicads are very similar to Vectorworks, some are worst, some are better which is expected.
Interesting what you say about forums, and yet you believe what Runxel says, which was mildly misleading re working in Layout views. You can if you want to. I use it for marking up and revision listing.
Unfortunatly, to truely see how good or bad a piece of software is, you have to work at least a couple of projects in it to compare.
One thing about Archicad is it can be used simply to get the job done but the user is not using it the way it was designed, and in my experience the majority of users don't use it to its potential. Don't know whether that's good or bad.

[Anonymous]

I fail yet to understand how to organise large sets of drawings (presentations, permits and their variants, the usual endless set of constructive drawings, etc.). But I will take a project and rebuild it in AC with the 30 days demo. Let's see how that goes.

[Brett Brown]

Have a look at Master Template (not free) and some of his YouTube videos with his already setup Template which addresses those queries. Might be a small price to pay to see how Archicad should work.

[Anonymous]

Thank you, I will.
Other good resources to learn Archicad?

I usually read the whole handbook while trying every single feature, but after that I do deepen with anything I find around.

[Brett Brown]

There are a few others but Eric is the Jonathan Pickup of Archicad.

[Anonymous]

I had a chat with Jonathan already. He brought me in 10 minutes around the major differences.
He knows me well and where I come from, as user type, so he warned me of the real hurt point: records.
I'll have to live with that.

If Eric is as good a teacher as Jonathan, then all is well.

[runxel]

_c_ wrote:
I fail yet to understand how to organise large sets of drawings (presentations, permits and their variants, the usual endless set of constructive drawings, etc.). But I will take a project and rebuild it in AC with the 30 days demo. Let's see how that goes.

I am pretty sure you already know this, but there a handful of sample projects on the website of Graphisoft, you can download and explore freely.

Organizing is done via folders, practically spoken.
I don't want to confuse you, but still I will drop a word here, which surely helps a lot with organizing: "clones". If you feel read, look it up.

And btw: of course you can work on the layouts. Brett criticized me correctly – but regarding dimensions you wouldn't do them on the layout. Instead you do some annotation on the layout which is specific to that layout (like the revision table).

[Anonymous]

Thank you, I will look into clones. As I said, I cannot install the demo yet, it would go wasted since I don't have the time to fully explore it.

I think that annotations should be used only sparingly as long as they don't have a mechanism of synchronisation and management across the project, which, I seem to gather, also AC doesn't have. So they are good for the occasional label or masking, no more.

Another question. Is there somewhere a comparison list of the difference across the various localised packages? Are there large price differences?

[runxel]

_c_ wrote:
I think that annotations should be used only sparingly as long as they don't have a mechanism of synchronisation and management across the project, which, I seem to gather, also AC doesn't have. So they are good for the occasional label or masking, no more.

If you mean something like key notes, well yeah, then sure, Archicad doesn't have it natively. There is a wonderful plugin, tho.
But Archicad has "properties", and you can bind them directly to your geometry and then you have smart labels, to textually display all the data you have. This is a very flexible way of working and managing data, actually.

_c_ wrote:
Another question. Is there somewhere a comparison list of the difference across the various localised packages? Are there large price differences?

You'd need to contact the reseller directly. Since this is not a very typical request I am not aware of any comparisons between language versions.