Graphisoft public roadmap - Follow-up conversation

[Gordana Radonic]

Dear Community, 

We're excited to have published our roadmap!

We'd love to hear your thoughts and questions. Please feel free to use this thread for discussion.

Graphisoft Insights announcement: https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Graphisoft-Insights/Graphisoft-public-roadmap/ba-p/375281

Public roadmap on the Graphisoft website.

Thank you.

[DGSketcher]

As with all things internet based, the idea of Tips & Tricks has been drowned out by the shear volume of information available. I find the best Tips & Tricks source is the online help, followed by the voluntary contributions of users with relevant experience posting here, after that you are stuck with the search engines in the big wide world. 

[mthd]

You are right we can easily get lost or distracted with the Internet’s depth of relevant and irrelevant information on the subject we are researching for Archicad.

Many other users like me have a better chance of understanding instructions with good clear diagrams and a video demonstration. Here is the place to post a relevant video regarding tips and tricks and a demonstration of what we want Archicad to be able to do for us in the future.

I learned early Archicad from the virtual tutor series by an Architect here in Australia. Before that I did a technical and further education course way back at AC7 in 2002. An industrial Architect taught us how to use the program and the principles of residential and other Architecture.

I do get some good answers by researching the forum and asking questions right here. 

[snow]

Hello again,

Because 'more formatting options' there are announced... I put this issue here:

...longing for the option to hide 'zero values'. 

(...mainly because it seems to be impossible to "mix" 'numbers' and 'nothing' in properties)

[mthd]

I am very much looking forward to “Design Options” and how they will work in a future version of Archicad. Right now I have to create a separate layer set for them and or separate plan files for each design option usually. It’s funny but even small residential projects can throw up a full set of design options for a new client.

[Tony Krepler AUS]

Hi,

It is a very impressive roadmap, and I hope a lot of features will come sooner than later.
It probably has been raised by others (sorry, if it is a duplicate — 9 pages are just too long...), it would be great to have a control feature for the LayoutBook, similar to the Model View Options. Currently, the content of the Project Info or the Layoutbook scheme elements can be accessed as autotexts, but GDL, for instance, has no idea about their content. It would be a welcome feature for all practices with 10+ Archicad licenses.

Also, AI-assisted design sounds great, although there are also a lot of processes, that could be automated in the documentation phase, and AI could probably just be very useful there. So, I am wondering if we could have another bubble in the Under Research (at least) to have AI-assisted Documentation? Automating processes in the Documentation phase could make a huge impact on the speed of delivering projects, hence the productivity and effectiveness of any practice. Besides, we could have more time for design...

Thanks,

Tony

[Paul King]

Rather than more time to design, what you would likely get is less time for documentation, so less time to iterate and optimise and enhance the design at a detailed level, and obviously less time with the project overall means less time to notice expensive mistakes or missed opportunities ...

[jl_lt]

Much better than the tool im proposing would be an AI assisted documentation process, from speed to setting up layouts, to annotations. Currently, working on Archicad in 3d is still a joy, the documentation process... not so much

[4hotshoes]

I find that a well thought out template does much of the heavy lifting for the document process. I spend time modeling the details and then just slice and place. But plans, sections and elevations are mostly done before I start a new project. They only need minor adjustments to show. I cannot imagine what AI will do for us yet. I have used ChatGPT for some creative ideas for naming a work group. It came up with some great ideas, but ultimately, we used human creativity. Maybe AI could do some small tasks that we don't really think much about, but the big stuff of designing buildings cannot be left to AI anymore than I would leave that to another architect to do for me.

[psmu]

Today was the introduction of spacio. The launch (beta) is tomorrow. This is where the things are going. 

Integration and even providing BIM features are in their consideration (real road map).

https://www.spacio.ai/

[Bricklyne Clarence]

I'm going to have the countervailing differing, and some might even say "Hot-Take"-ey opinion on this whole discussion.

I think Graphisoft should stay the hell away from AI or anything AI-related.

which they reckon are the way of the future, but because of lack of foresight and clarity at the inception, or a lack of collaborative approach or maybe just because of their usual byzantine way of doing things, they inevitably end up spending a lot of (development) resources working up something that either goes nowhere at all or doesn't go where it's going very well or very far.

I give you Maxonform (For those of you old enough to remember that little adventure)
I give you VICO (or VICOsoft or whatever the hell it was actually called)
I give you the Morph tool 1.0...
I give you The ArchiCAD-Rhino-Grasshopper bridge....

Cinerender,....Twinmotion,...

...and on and on and on and on.....

Some of them show or showed great promise.
A lot of them had admirable and good intent.
But almost all of them had almost the same fate.

I think if they go spending development and research resources on AI now, when there's already a backlog of issues on the program to be fixed or improved, and most pointedly now when we've already had three versions  of them going on another one of those adventures of theirs (SAM and MEP) with the rest of us paying for it heavily, we're just going to end up having an even more rough time on the traditional design end of things with even more things getting more and more ignored and/or short-riffed.

I'd love to give them the benefit of doubt here, I really really would, but they have frittered away a lot of the goodwill that they had formerly invested with their customers over the last several years for me to imagine that any such effort wouldn't be anything more than a big massive waste of time that would eventually be abandoned somewhere down the road when it doesn't catch on or when society moves on to the next big fad or "thing".

Please just fix the problems and short-comings, and workaround issues in the program as is right now, or give us better tools .......to DESIGN with, and leave the AI alone for the time being until you can prove you've gained people's confidence enough that they won't feel like their license fees are being wasted (......again....) for (yet) a(nother) pointless venture and tool they neither need, asked for nor will ever use.

That's my two pennies or two cents worth.

[torben_wadlinger]

You're right. GS invested time and money into doubtful functions. Don't get me wrong, I think AI makes a hugh impact an early phases or (if implemented well) in documentation. What AC lacks most of is an interface to communicate with these tools out there. IFC is no option. But as always GS is late to the wrong party ...

[Eduardo Rolon]

IIRC what became Vico was originally ArchiFM (Facilities Manager).

[Botonis]

If I remembmer correctly Vico was originally the Archicad Constructor Version  with Cost and Quantity Estimation Functionality.

Everything then was implemented in Vico Office.

[Eduardo Rolon]

and you are correct.

ArchiFM became ArchiFM

https://archifm.net/product/

[mthd]

AI is only in the idea pool at this stage but it can be useful if used correctly to help us save time in the design & documentation process. True you can waste much time and resources on R&D with this feature. It looks like most of us would like to see the basics fixed and brought up to scratch in ArchiCAD and that those things should be the main priority in new releases ? Then hopefully we may actually be happy in paying for our subscriptions to fund those very necessary improvements and or features that we really need and will use.

I am excited about the “Design Guides” and “Design Options” coming soon as many others are. They may still need some further development in the future but that’s a good start from Graphisoft and in the right direction of development. I think these things will help ArchiCAD keep up with the competition and hopefully overtake them and go even further ahead of them.

[Rex Maximilian]

It's been two months. Where is this promised user interaction? You're about to have another online event, yet the roadmap has not progressed at all. 

[Algimantas Kuprenas]

Was also wondering about that. No action in roadmap - looks asleep at the moment.

[DGSketcher]

I am half hoping the shut down on the 10th may bring some good news...

[Barry Kelly]

I am not expecting the roadmap to change (very much if at all), until 27 is released.

Then hopefully all of the 'coming soon' will actually be here and can be removed from the road map.

Most of the 'in progress' can then move up to 'coming soon'.

Some of the 'under research' will become 'in progress'.

Some from the 'ideas pool' will migrate to 'under research' and we will hopefully get a new list of idea being thought about.

That is a generalisation of course, but I don't expect too many things to move around until the next release.

Then hopefully minor updates every 3 to 6 months?

Barry.

[DGSketcher]

I think the forum sentiment may be less about the content of the Roadmap, and more about the long promised ability to vote on the content.