Maxon Freeform in ArchiCad

[Anonymous]

"SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT – JUNE PROMOTION!

Graphisoft and Maxon are happy to announce a new partner solution for ArchiCAD called FreeForm. Based on Cinema 4D, FreeForm allows users of ArchiCAD to edit elements of building models as parametric primitives; with extrusions, holes, planes, points and paths; or with deformers and form generators, providing total design freedom!"


I'm not sure what this is, but it sounds pretty interesting. Total design freedom? I like that. Anyone care to comment.

[Djordje]

Brad wrote:
Why does GS ignore it and try for MaxonForm and plugins instead? Enough people have been screaming for this for long enough that I astounded by the silence from GS, from re-sellers and yes, from our dear moderator, too.

Well, your dear moderator is known for being anything but silent ... so as you are obviously off the soapbox, let me climb.

First, I think that using blobbing modelers like FormZ in architectural schools is DANGEROUS. How many Frank Gehrys can there be? How do you build such stuff? They don't exactly teach you how to build a doghouse, let alone Bilbao museum. What is the percentage of the projects in the world that REALLY use NURBS and other "my elevation is paper thin so it flaps in the wind" designs?

So, let's talk about REAL and UNREAL. Not the game.

I LOVE ArchiCAD because it MAKES YOU BE REAL. As for your list, the only thing I don't agree with is tilting a slab - use the roof, man! - while the rest, yes, I did wish more than once.

But then - thinking out of the box, learning a bit of GDL (easier than learning 3ds max, trust me!) and just being plain CREATIVE (we should be, should we not?) solves MANY if not all problems. I still have to see (except NURBS) things that can NOT be done in ArchiCAD.

Also, the long frustration did not let most of you blob lovers read Akos' post. I mean READ, not skim and apply the "oh, they are bu**s****g us again" approach.

Deformers are IMHO unhealthy, and would burden the math of the model heavily - ask yourself, WHY is there no VB that does blobbing at the same time, so you have either/or? Not even the BigA. Hm.

If I knew now that Graphisoft is going to implement full set of freeform modeling tools in ArchiCAD 10 I would not be allowed to say it. Those who know, cannot say. Akos said one important thing - Maxon is offered as a FREEFORM and ORGANIC FORM modeler, not as a solution to all the problems. After all, take a wall from ArchiCAD, mash it in Maxon, take it back - OOPS! not a wall any more. End of coordinated construction documentation story.

He also says:

Modeling freedom in ArchiCAD?
I have to emphasize that introducing MaxonForm does NOT mean that we stop developing ArchiCAD’s own modeling capabilities. MaxonForm was NOT developed to replace the freedom in modeling and editing ArchiCAD construction elements. MaxonForm is a tool to create free-form organic objects.

So, my reading is that our (yes, OUR!) modeling and 3D management gripes ARE being addressed.

As for the old timing - maybe I am an old timer, but I spend 80% of my ArchiCAD time in the 3D window. No other way to design. If I wanted to do 2Ds, you buy lots of pencils and paper for the price of a computer, never mind the software.

Point is: let's not mix apples and pears. ArchiCAD is CAD, Revit too - the only other REAL VB/BIM application, FormZ is modeler, max is for making Star Wars. Oh, yes, you can slice a salami with a power saw. The question is why would you.

The box is creaking, so I am getting off soon, just one more thing: Graphisoft would be plain STUPID if thye did not hear the chorus of voices asking for more modeling freedom. IMHE, they did listen until now, so there is no reason why would they stop.

Crrrrack ... ooops ...

[Anonymous]

Djordje you confused me.

NUMBRS are not what is the most important tool out there for architects.
BUT

Tools like those sketch up uses, which is actually what you will find in mesh subdivision modellers, are very important to create details. Architecture models are not just walls slabs roofs, but also details!

Its not hard to build what you desing. Concrete is a very handy material and you can easily create complex surfaces (numbrs included). My english does not help me describe the procedure but its very common i think

But before getting to numbrs lets first get decent walls. Adding hotpoints everywhere, creating wall profiles.. and much much more.

As you can remember i was very dissapointed not to see ANY new building tool in V9, and 4 years without any new building tool is a very very long time.

I do find myself all the time looking at other cad software, and this makes me uncomfortable

[Petros Ioannou]

Ok then...since we are not talking about Gehry, Nouvel or some students at universities who feel very proud about their accomplishments with Maya (and I agree fully with Djordje and I was totaly covered and satisfied with Akos's respond) lets talk about some real life situations....
In the attached image there is a section of a commercial center I was involved in. (Builded project). I made some red lines for the levels-floors of the building. In yellow is one of the cinema halls.
How one could model this section in ArchiCAD??
The first thing that one should think , is the way you build it... level by level!
And how is that, when the hall in yellow is builded as a whole entity ? The walls on the sides are full wight steel beams with sound insulated gypsum board walls cover with panels which cover the whole height and have to be modeled as one entity...
If you choose to make these higher walls in one story then you have no cinema plans on the above levels....If you chose to split it then what happens with the rows of seats?? Can one split them???
Has anyone in GS ever tried to make such a building in ArchiCAD ?????
No nothing is curved, everything is in XYZ and still there is a problem.
Why??? Because there is no ability to show a wall on the above floor , and no ability to cut elements on a desired level! That would be an improvement!!
Sorry If I went off topic but since the talk went to real life buildings ....

Petros

[LiHigh]

Petros,

Good point!
I don't think building complex 3D model is that difficult, but at the same time to show appropriate 2D informations for builders is tough.
The main different between a BIM and 3D Modeler is that BIM sofware can display 2D of the Model in several ways. but not Max or Maya.... they just show plain 2D projection.
I WISH for whatever new 3D tools GS introduce in the future, please make them work in both 2d and 3d.

[Anonymous]

1. Glad to hear the GS is not giving up on 3D despite MaxonForm!

2. I understand that the capability to model the swoopy shapes and curves made by a Gehry are not needed by 99.9% of AC's users, but come on Djordje, how creative can we get in Archicad when walls can't be raked or battered, when roof edges must be in one plane, when we are not free to rotate, tilt, fold and deform in even simple ways the geometry we work with? SEOs don't stick and the cutting object cannot be deleted and must be moved when the target moves. These are not sufficient tools.

3. I wrote "tilt slabs" because I use Cadimage's Slab Accessory tool, which gives nice footing for slabs, but not for roofs. If I wanted to build my own footing under a tilted slab (read roof) I need to do it with walls or slabs, stacked onto top of one another, all of which need to be independently updated when anything changes. In Sketchup, I simply offset the underside of my (easily tilted) slab, pull that offset area down 12", offset again and pulldown a footing.
The point is we need freedom to alter geometries on the fly in 3D, not just in the x,y, or z planes and not just within the narrow limits of a few hotspots.

4. I know that in the point above, Sketchup is not BIM. We all know that FormZ is neither BIM nor CAD. THE POINT IS AT LEAST ONE BIM/CAD APP NEEDS TO GET 3D at least to the Sketchup/Vectorworks level. We here hope that program will be Archicad.

5. As for Petros' example: this is the kind of stuff we face everyday in Archicad because the geometries are so limited. I am constantly exporting anything anyone is going to look at into Sketchup, with the exception of plans and sections. And the sections often need to be broken into lines for cleanup. As for 3D drawings (not renderings), axons, elevations, etc.. Archicad is a dinosaur. I cannot create much of what I want to show (without converting to lines), and when objects overlap or don't look right in 3D, I can't clean anything up (without converting to lines).
Look at Petros' double height auditorium. Either he makes one two-story high wall and is screwed (no walls across floors, of course) or he stacks the walls, in which case he is likely to get a seam unless his walls are perfectly aligned (and even the if he uses the sketch renderer, for example). Even if his walls remain perfectly aligned after a few revisions, a slab or other object may intrude, ruining the section view. The solution? One wall in reality = one wall in the model. Alternatively (and once again, I refer the reader to Sketchup), how about the ability to hide stray lines (a slab edge, a stubborn wall seam, etc..) for presentation purposes?

I am happy now using Archicad for what I use it for, and Sketchup for what I use it for, but how much better would AC be if it incorporated some geometrical freedom?

It would be wonderful, assuming Archicad as a program could handle it.

This was the question I posed in my previous post: is Archicad flexible and robust enough to act like Sketchup (for example) or is the underlying software architecture too old and outdated? Put another way: is Archicad an OSX underneath, or a Windows XP? If the latter, then I will shut up about 3D because I wouldn't want a bunch of new 3D features introduced that were piggybacked onto an outed software core resulting in a realy poor product.


Rant over.



Oh, and walls need to be visible across floors.

[stefan]

I think SmartGeometry (incorporated into Bentley Microstation) comes pretty close ( http://www.smartgeometry.org ), but it's more akin to a Visual GDL-tool combined with Maya/Houdini node networks then with speed and ease-of-use of SketchUp.
It's not really a BIM model, but it's a parametric geometry model, in which many (geometric) design options can be incorporated and baked in rules. You can alter the parameters at any time and still retain a model that obeys your rules, as you design.

I really, really like SketchUp, but don't forget that it's only a surface modeller. Nothing less but certainly nothing more: no 'real' boolean operations, no easy way of modelling an interior (when comparing to an exterior), no real 2D drawing tools (although I abused the 3D-tools more then once to create nice 'drawings'.

I believe ArchiCAD is so connected to GDL that 3D-modelling improvements need to come from the underlying GDL, before they can be really supported in the ArchiCAD interface (and that is: right in the 3D Window, which needs better view navigation and more direct interaction. It has become much better then in the past, but it needs more).

---

The Guggenheim in Bilbao is not "designed" on the computer. It's based on sketches (pen on paper) and a clay-model, which was digitized and subsequently transferred to CATIA to produce a construction model, from which 2D-drawings were derived (and probably cleaned up in AutoCAD or some other drawing application).

But there are more and more examples of "blob-architecture", which happen to be designed on the computer, often using existing modelling software, such as Maya, Rhino, 3ds max, Form*Z or whatever. Certainly not on software capable of drawing.

And then you have a whole set of custom geometry-generating programs and algorithms, which let the computer help in design, but no BIM model is generated: only geometry (NURBS, Meshes or whatever).

---

Imagine how nice it would be to actually have a freeform BIM application. Let's hope for GS that this will not be Revit first ...

[Anonymous]

The problem Stefan, is as you said, GDL. It should be greatly enchanced with 3d operations.

If those 3d issues are not resolved in AC10, then AC11 will be another 2-3 years later, and that is too much time.

I think that a nice redesign of GDL, a brave one, will change AC.
Now GDL basically supports only what can be accomplished with extrude and sweeping methods. This is too limited.

Even that features are limited. I wish when i create a 3d object by sweeping a path, that the path would become the sceleton of the object, in the sence that i would see hotspots on the sceleton add points curve the path and the sweep will follow. And all those operations should be done in 3d. Not with a 2d path.

We reached AC9 and we dont have 3d polylines!!!!. That is CRAZY.
We dont have 3d rotation.

Sketchup works on faces. With archicad we have walls that are solids. But then we need to sculpture the SURFACES of walls. So sketchup tools for ac skins would be really nice.

[Anonymous]

Brad wrote:
1. Glad to hear the GS is not giving up on 3D despite MaxonForm! (...)
(...)
I am happy now using Archicad for what I use it for, and Sketchup for what I use it for, but how much better would AC be if it incorporated some geometrical freedom?
It would be wonderful, assuming Archicad as a program could handle it.
(...)

Has anyone tried or bought the MaxonForm plugin? Can someone gives us a user feedback, with pros and cons? Can MaxonForm edit traditional archicad elements like walls and roofs? Is it so that MaxonForm transforms these elements into GDL scriptable objects?

[Anonymous]

Freeform seems fine and I'm interested. ArchiCad 10 however needs to be a paradigm shift for the software. Many of the discussings revolve around eliminating the barrier between 2d/3d. The work arounds for these issues have worked until now. Jumping through hoops to make floor plans look like they need to, modelling issues, or not having multiple plan views open concurrently, etc. are things that Graphisoft have been aware of for quite some time. Now is the time Graphisoft! The competition is good but it's not nirvana. We haven't heard to much from the development team and I hope it's because they are working their tails off to make 10 really good.

[Anonymous]

Akos,

I wasn't able to make it to the local demo. Is there some way I can see one online? Or is there at least a demo version of the product I could try?

I missed the specials because I simply hadn't had a chance to evaluate the products because of some personal issues including having to have surgery, and didn't want to buy it blindly.

Wendy