Looking for an objective opinion as to how well Archicad does construction documents

[Anonymous]

I'm looking for a long term software solution that does the best job with making construction documents. I've been playing with Sketchup and Rhino but feel that the process for turning the model into condocs is clunky.

Other contending software that I'm looking at are:

Revit
Chief Architect
Softplan

If anyone has experience with any of those for condocs please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks.

[Steve Jepson]

Richard wrote:
....
The framing model that Steve showed would take about 30 sec's to create in Chief, and you'd get a full list of materials. However, Steve does some of the nicest and most complete residential construction doc's I've ever seen, so maybe you could get him to show you a sample of what an advanced AC user can do.

Thanks Richard, but I don't think there is any program that can model the framing in that building in a matter of seconds. Some parts of it of course, but most of it almost... but not quite. There is no magic button that will Frame the building exactly like you need it and for all the all the reasons you need to have it a certain way. All things considered, I like ArchiCAD for what I am doing. But the new user should understand that if they want a career working as an employee, (what an unfortunate thing) they should learn to use Revit because they will have 100x more job opportunities.

[Richard Morrison]

Well, Steve, if you model the walls and roof correctly, and the framing defaults are set correctly, the framing will be done almost instantaneously. And you can then change any framing member, if required. You are welcome to disbelieve, but I assure you that the framing in this program is nothing short of amazing.

I agree that if someone wants to be an employee, Revit is the skill to have, at least in the U.S. But that was not what the OP expressed.

[felcunha]

Steve wrote:
....All things considered, I like ArchiCAD for what I am doing. But the new user should understand that if they want a career working as an employee, (what an unfortunate thing) they should learn to use Revit because they will have 100x more job opportunities.

That applies to you and your reality today. It's not the case in other countries or even other cities. I know a company who started to implement Revit and realised it would cost too expensive for the benefits they would have. Then they've chosen to step-back and got Archicad.
Its benefits over Revit : less expensive in software and hardware ; less time to and less expensive in learning ; no need of a software expert in-house.
I agree with them, by having used Revit for years and have chosen to use Archicad because it's easier and lets us be focused in our profession (architects and like) more than in software problems-solving.

[Karl Griffith]

Steve wrote:
ArchiCAD is the better program. Sadly, that is very seldom the most critical factor in selecting a software program to build your career around. I love using ArchiCAD because I just a little one man show and I don't need to collaborate with other BIM software programs. ArchiCAD has everything I need , and then some. But not everyone can work as independently as I do.

I am successfully using ArchiCAD in collaboration with an engineering client using Revit. While things would probably be a bit easier if I was using Revit, using ArchiCAD is not a problem. In fact, my impression is that ArchiCAD is more highly developed for such collaboration than Revit is. And with the new Revit add-on from BIM6x, things are even easier. If you truly want to be collaborative, in the open-platform sense, ArchiCAD may well be the program of choice. My impression is that Revit is not as interested in collaboration across platforms...

[Steve Jepson]

felcunha wrote:

Steve wrote:
....All things considered, I like ArchiCAD for what I am doing. But the new user should understand that if they want a career working as an employee, (what an unfortunate thing) they should learn to use Revit because they will have 100x more job opportunities.

That applies to you and your reality today. It's not the case in other countries or even other cities. I know a company who started to implement Revit and realised it would cost too expensive for the benefits they would have. Then they've chosen to step-back and got Archicad.
Its benefits over Revit : less expensive in software and hardware ; less time to and less expensive in learning ; no need of a software expert in-house.
I agree with them, by having used Revit for years and have chosen to use Archicad because it's easier and lets us be focused in our profession (architects and like) more than in software problems-solving.

No doubt about it. ArchiCAD is the superior program. My point is that even inferior skills with the inferior program can still make you more employable than a person with far superior ArchiCAD skills.
ArchiCAD is literally an obscure program right here in Salem, Oregon. I just did some business with one of the largest and oldest engineering companies in town and no one in their office had ever heard of Graphisoft or ArchiCAD. How sad is that!

[Anonymous]

This is probably buried already,
Go with Chief if you do mostly single family residential work
Go with ArchiCAD if you do multifamily and commercial work
Each is best at it's intended purpose.
As for how well the programs do ConDocs?
That's user dependent, and has nothing to do with the Software
How well do you do construction documents? I have a friend that uses "Microsoft Visio" to do con docs and she does exceptionally well!