Considering moving away from Archicad

[eshonbela]

Hi all, I'm after a bit of a sense check here because I've recently be contacted by Graphisoft about their new subscription models Studio and Collaborate.

We're a small interiors focussed team and generally work well with Solo. It has all the features we need for our work. There's been some issues and bugs but on balance it's been fine.

The new subscription models means more costs to us, but the biggest issue I have is that I cannot pay for the annual subscription on a monthly basis. I do this with Adobe so I don't know why Graphisoft are being so stubborn. It's potentially a huge cost once a year for a small practice, at the wrong time it could be crippling.

They're also making MEP only available in the more expensive Collaborate version. We don't design MEP but we do coordinate it so we need to draw the objects occasionally. It's not really worth the extra £500 or so a year to us to draw a couple of ducts every now and again.

All in all they're really starting to get to me now with the way they do things and I'm considering a move. To what I'm not sure, and I'm reluctant because of the time I've put into learning this software and developing our standards. But I''m not going to hold on just for that if they continue to make my life difficult.

How is everyone else getting on with the software, am I just getting annoyed because it's going to cost more. Is it still worth it?

[scottjm]

You theoretically don’t have to move to subscription. You could just continue to use your perpetual license at no additional cost. 
You however won’t get the latest version every year, so you have to weigh that up. 

There is an option we considered with staying on our perpetual licence for 3-5years and then moving to subscription. We decided not to do that as you miss out on the big discount offers for perpetual to subscription conversion, so the numbers didn’t stack up. 

I think everyone was a little frustrated by the move to subscription, but unfortunately it’s the defacto for all software these days so it was only a matter of time. 

Not sure where you are located, but in Australia Central Innovation (the local reseller) offer a service to pay the annual invoices through a third party monthly payment plan. It adds a little bit to the overall invoice (5% I think), but definitely makes it more manageable. 

I had thought Graphisoft did offer a monthly subscription, but the annualised cost is almost double the annual fee, so not worth it. 

Something to discuss with your local reseller or if there are any third party monthly payment platforms available in your region. 

The other thing you need to consider, what’s the alternative. If you are going to move into the Autodesk ecosystem, the subscription costs are no better. A Revit licence is also a named licence unlike the floating licence model Graphisoft run. So you’d need to buy a Revit licence for everyone who MIGHT use it in your office, or spend your whole life managing licences manually.  Also, I’ve heard rumours of Autodesk pushing ahead with token based usage licensing models, which is just crazy. 

For my 2cents I think Archicad is the better ‘design’ software of the two. it may have its foibles and Revit has some better efficiency with documentation, but I personally find it very easy and intuitive to design a building in 3d in Archicad. (That said, I’ve not used Revit extensively)

You need to weigh up what works best for your practice to achieve your design and documentation outcomes. 

Regarding MEP, unless you were actively modelling pipes, ducts etc I don’t think it would be necessary. You could always just use objects in the standard library to represent ceiling grilles, ac condensers. The MEP versions of these just have some additional parameters to connect directly with the modelled pipework and export nicely to IFC. 

[jl_lt]

It only costs more if you pay more

[MatteoDes]

You keep your perpetual license.

meaning no more future updates but that doesn’t compromise your freedom and productivity.

You could subscribe to a new version in the future only if you’re really interested in the new upcoming features.

We had the chance to pay within a discount for the next 3 years.

While waiting the subscription to expire, I’ll moving/export all the projects to Sketchup.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

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@eshonbela wrote:

.......

They're also making MEP only available in the more expensive Collaborate version. We don't design MEP but we do coordinate it so we need to draw the objects occasionally. It's not really worth the extra £500 or so a year to us to draw a couple of ducts every now and again.

All in all they're really starting to get to me now with the way they do things and I'm considering a move. To what I'm not sure, and I'm reluctant because of the time I've put into learning this software and developing our standards. But I''m not going to hold on just for that if they continue to make my life difficult.

How is everyone else getting on with the software, am I just getting annoyed because it's going to cost more. Is it still worth it?

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This alone has to be the most frustrating,....and honestly, most heartbreaking part about this whole transition.

The amount of time, effort, resources that us old-timers have spent and invested in not just learning this software, but implementing and using it, and even more so, the colleagues we've convinced to switch over, telling them that Graphisoft is a great company to deal with (....unlike those other guys) - which wasn't untrue earlier on, but which because of what they've become in recent years, just makes us seem like liars and as unreliable as they've become.

All of that flushed down the drain.

Some of us have practically invested a lifetime worth of productive years into this software and working with it, that the notion of finding another path or solution seems really antithetical to everything we are, and yet not doing so risks going down with them and their ship.

What an utter shame.