Modeling
About Archicad's design tools, element connections, modeling concepts, etc.

AC15 / Modelling

Anonymous
Not applicable
So now we know ArchiCAD 15 and 16 are to do with modelling, similar to the way 13 and 14 were centred around teamwork.

This will be interesting to watch, as the implementation will affect whether solo users see this as “yet another update for the big end of town”, or whether it has a general benefit to the usability of the program, and therefore is beneficial to all users.

I’ve long held the view that the 3D engine in ArchiCAD is archaic and in need of urgent overhaul. Not only is it slow, but the ability to create complex objects is limited to GDL scripting, and then there is the whole disconnect between the 3d model and 2d view. Specific complaints might include:
• Single threaded processing (AC needs to maximise use of mainstream multicore CPUs)
• Main accessibility via GDL scripting irrelevant to majority of users (AC needs a good GUI for modelling - urgently).
• Buggy SEOs that magically affect a 3D view without modifying the 2D view. (AC needs a robust modelling toolbox including nurb type shapes, with reliable transformations, that are graphically apparent in the final object).
• Complex model elements do not relate to the ArchiCAD toolset. (Creating complex walls etc still need to behave as walls and be able to receive doors and windows etc - think complex profiles on steroids. One of significant flaws in GS last attempt, the Maxonform add-on, was the way “intelligent’ objects lost their properties and became part of a dumb amorphous mass – and so could not be scheduled, dimensioned etc.).
• Inability to set up relationships between objects

Observations of the pace of development and resources available at GS suggest that they are struggling to keep up with the competition. Two years of AC updates were consumed implementing and fixing Teamwork, and we understand at least 3-4 years development preceded that. Other parts of the program have slipped into irrelevancy (e.g. Lightworks– though fortunately one can get around that with a plethora of capable renderers).

Nemescheck as a group has committed to IFCs for interoperability and so we see both GS and Vectorworks (VW) committing to that standard. Returning to the topic of modelling, VW have embraced Siemens Parametric technology going forward. In an ideal world I would hope GS could also embrace such – not only offering a terrific boost to AC, but also strengthening the Nemescheck group through a far more powerful interoperability than IFCs offer. We shall wait and see what unfolds next year….
Interested to hear what other users have to say on the topic....
54 REPLIES 54
Anonymous
Not applicable
Richard wrote:
Great. Now I will be able to do blob-itecture. Why is this useful?

I would be far happier with an interior elevation tool that actually worked properly. Or integrated framing that worked properly in accordance with U.S. framing standards. Or a calculate menu that was useful and understandable. Or...
I don't need to (or actually want to) do blobitecture either, but it would be nice to have modeling tools that at the very least were consistent from plan to elevation to section and perspective.

Does anyone know what was actually discussed?

Don
Anonymous
Not applicable
At 1.44 on this official Graphisoft video about a competition winner, I notice they flash up a view of a board showing lots of curvy-blobby architecture, with a tongue-in-cheek caption of "ArchiCAD 15 secret plans???;- )'"

Now, it's unlikely they would have done all those actually in ArchiCAD yet, but why would they have an ideas board full of curvy buildings when we know ArchiCAD doesn't do curvy stuff very well? I'd guess they must be seriously thinking about it at the moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AezIxlBpSu8

I'd say there was a fair possibility that this might be coming within the next couple of releases, but I'll reserve judgement regarding how useful this might be for me until some official info is released!
Anonymous
Not applicable
Check this out.

http://autodesk-revit.blogspot.com/2010/11/autodesk-project-vasari-technology.html

This is what AC15 will be competing against
kiwicodes wrote:
Check this out.

http://autodesk-revit.blogspot.com/2010/11/autodesk-project-vasari-technology.html

This is what AC15 will be competing against
Looks like Sketchup with a Revit interface. (i.e. Sketchup without the ease of use.) I don't really see that much there. Maybe I'm missing something.
Richard
--------------------------
Richard Morrison, Architect-Interior Designer
AC26 (since AC6.0), Win10
Anonymous
Not applicable
kiwicodes wrote:
This is what AC15 will be competing against
This is not BIM software at the moment. It's a parametric modelling software. I'd say it was targeting Rhino users, rather than Sketchup or ArchiCAD. Students are going to go crazy over this!!

The 'Spoon' technology sounds interesting. Is this a cloud-based service; i.e. Vasari doesn't actually run on your machine - you just see the results on your screen; or does your computer still do the hard work and just the software components get streamed to your machine as and when necessary. Or even something else?

And of course Autodesk will go to great lengths to ensure that ArchiCAD users can easily import the data for use in our models too! IFC : no chance!
Peter wrote:

This is not BIM software at the moment. It's a parametric modelling software. I'd say it was targeting Rhino users, rather than Sketchup or ArchiCAD. Students are going to go crazy over this!!

The 'Spoon' technology sounds interesting. Is this a cloud-based service; i.e. Vasari doesn't actually run on your machine - you just see the results on your screen; or does your computer still do the hard work and just the software components get streamed to your machine as and when necessary. Or even something else?
From what I've read of it, that Spoon technology is akin to what Graphisoft's own Virtual Building Explorer (VBE) does in producing a self-contained .EXE file of a VR model.
It's a was to package whole applications into a single self-contained file that doesn't require any installation to run and that includes all of the program's pre-requisites.

Also, while they say it is 'Cloud' capable, I don't think that that's the express purpose of it.

I think Cloud computing still has a ways to go before it is feasible for most people running applications and doing day-to-day work and at the moment it's mostly just speculative technology.


kiwicodes wrote:
This is what AC15 will be competing against
Peter wrote:

This is not BIM software at the moment. It's a parametric modelling software. I'd say it was targeting Rhino users, rather than Sketchup or ArchiCAD. Students are going to go crazy over this!!

You're correct in that this isn't currently BIM, although the fact that they say it is parametric, tends to indicate to me that the intention is for it to tie into Revit as a front-end (Free-form?)conceptualization tie-in as a potential replacement to Sketchup/Rhino imports.

At the very least it does show that Autodesk is paying attention to that particular aspect of Revit's (and the wider BIM technology) shortcomings
vis-a-vis Free-form modeling, and design conceptualization at the beginning of most Design processes.

But the fact that they are building it on top of Revit's infamous godawful and atrocious interface doesn't exactly put them in a good place to start. For one thing, looking at those videos, designing in this seems a lot too much like "designing"(if you can even call it that) or working in Revit
Think multiple dialog boxes up to 7 levels deep just to make a simple change to a parameter.

Revit itself is handicapped by the fact that it is or rather was built on the foundations of Pro-E or Pro-Engineering, an parametric Engineering program where it's two original developers used to work before they decided to develop Revit.

The problem with this that Architects don't think or work in the same way as Engineers do - so if you develop your program to function as if it's an engineering program, but for the purpose of designing architecture, then you have a problem. It's part of the reason why Revit is supposedly so much better at documentation than it is at design, and also why engineers and consultants enjoy using it's cousins (Revit Structure, MEP et al) more than Architects actually enjoy working in it.

It's also a reason why it's not as scalable as ArchiCAD (or even Bentley Microstation) when it comes to large models and why it begins to choke when your model gets large with a lot of over-constrains.

So why they would choose to develop a conceptual designer on top of the Revit interface, to go against Sketchup and Rhino which have more accessible interfaces and workflows, is beyond me. As a direct competitor to those 2 programs with that interface, it's a non-starter.

But like I said, at least it shows that they are thinking about it.


A few other random and not so random thoughts:

It's good to note that GS is finally paying attention to the modeling tools that have seriously and desperately needed an upgrade for the longest time. That's assuming that any of what was leaked is true and also depending on to what degree they are serious in this regard and how far they'll push it.
But of course, it's not surprising to see the usual "Why do we need this?" or the "Do we really need these tools" crowd piping up as usual. Just because you don't need certain tools improved doesn't mean that other people don't want them addressed, and not every body plans on using these tools to do "Blob-tecture".
Personally, I hope they address the long-standing issues such as the moe obvious ones like the Stair Toool and/or a more intelligent rail tool, as well as a more intuitive, graphical and fully parametric Custom object modeler that would hopefully free them from that GDL-programming albatross that has hung around their neck for the past 20 plus years.
Nobody uses DOS anymore, so why make your graphically trained users to have to write lines of code to create a parametric door or window.

Even programmers today have Visual C++ and things like Grasshopper for scripters in Rhino with visually orientated interfaces, so this is really long overdue.

As the old adage goes, in ArchiCAD it's easy and a pleasure to design buildings in, but a nightmare and a headache to try to create parametric custom objects in, while in Revit it's easy to create custom objects in, but a nightmare and headache to try to design buildings in.
GS can easily rectify this in one or 2 releases and I hope we see the start in AC15.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Bricklyne wrote:
So why they would choose to develop a conceptual designer on top of the Revit interface.....
I think you may have got this all wrong. Its not built on top of Revit. This is a stripped down version of Revit just for massing and energy Calcs (and for free).

Revit 2011 has all these functions now.
kiwicodes wrote:
Bricklyne wrote:
So why they would choose to develop a conceptual designer on top of the Revit interface.....
I think you may have got this all wrong. Its not built on top of Revit. This is a stripped down version of Revit just for massing and energy Calcs (and for free).

Revit 2011 has all these functions now.
I don't see how what you said is different from what I said.
"Built on top of" could just as easily mean that they took Revit (2011 or whatever) and stripped away all the unnecessary (for conceptual design) bloat, and then used the remaining framework or chasis to add on to it new Conceptual massing and free-form modeling tools which Revit proper does not have.

When I said "built on top of" I did not mean that it functions inside or as a subset of Revit proper. I merely meant that they used Revit as a starting point (whether it just be the interface and workflow which is evident from those videos or whether it be the actual Kernel or engine that was used as a stripped away version) and then added the new tools on to it, but essentially the same methodology and toolsets (reference planes, constrained dims etc etc).

In other words, they deliberately chose to use the Revit interface as a base (presumably to make it more familiar to Revit uses) and potentially more, to build upon it.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Bricklyne wrote:
... and stripped away all the unnecessary (for conceptual design) bloat, and then used the remaining framework or chasis to add on to it new Conceptual massing and free-form modeling tools which Revit proper does not have.
I'm not sure how well you know Revit but Revit already has all those Conceptual Massing and free form modeling tools now along with the Energy tools. Actually they were introduced in Revit 2010, so that is not new.
Rakela Raul
Participant
great !! cannot wait to start playing with it.... recently, im having the need (and strong) to speak revit.... I am feeling HC, as a matter of fact.
Cities, our MEP subconsultants, are using it and too much of a problem for us.

Good news and welcome model'g tools !!
but i feel we are behind anyway, the communication among BIM softs is much more urgent @ this point... IMHO (& ignorant)
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