Is Graphisoft listening to their users (us)?

[Wlad222]

Is anyone else feeling frustrated with how GS is spending our subscription money? Honestly, I don’t think they’re using it fairly, and I’m not happy with the results we’re getting.

For the steep price we’re paying, I expected way more innovation and meaningful updates. What features have they actually delivered that feel revolutionary or worth this kind of cost?

To me, it feels like they’re just coasting on the subscription model without giving us the value we deserve. Why can’t we have a one-time purchase option like other platforms? I’m starting to feel like this whole thing is a cash grab. Anyone else feel the same way

[jl_lt]

I would say yes!     But believe me not, just take a look at the comments in other threads

[Bricklyne Clarence]

If you think you're mad now, just wait until you see their new and "improved" (....again......again)....re-publishd Roadmap.

They've been doing promos for it all over the place, except,.....(suspiciously) around these here parts. Probably spurred y the fact that their big competitors and rivals Autodesk also released a revamped Roadmap of their own, as they too make a push to improve their relations with their customers.

In any case, from the "new" Graphisoft roadmap, gone is the "Idea Pool" that at least had the semblance that they were kind of paying attention to what Users have been asking for, seeing as it was just a collection of the most popular wishes they cherry-picked from the old Wishlist forum. I guess doing their "Wishlist spring-cleaning" cleanup and revamping that too, gave them the excuse to get rid of all those annoying reminders of how long they've been ignoring customers for once and for all.

Also gone is the tool that allowed users to be able to tell just how much resources and planning were actually being dedicated to pure Architecture-discipline functions and features, versus MEP, and SAM/Structural and "other".

It's not a great look when your own Roadmap tells on you and reveals that you're actually investing more of your resources developing tools that the majority of your users don't even actually use. So I can totally see why they got rid of that.

Unfortunately the new Roadmap doesn't offer any hope for those wishing for an improvement in direction that the company is taking this product in.

Just more of the same....

"We do what we want, whether you like it or not."

"You take what you get".

"More tools and "improvements" that you'll hardly use/were barely requested/ have niche appeal...,<-take your pick." 

And there's no almost no relation or connection with their other newly revamped thing in that new Wishlist forum, where they're cynically taken the most popular wishes that people had wished for and voted for, and those that they don't feel like working on, they simply place "On Hold" sometimes even without explanation, and even when they do offer explanatations, rather laughable ones at that. 

Like what even is the point of having a Wishlist section if that's how you're going to treat it?

But hey, you're on Subscription which means you should still be able to chime in on the Wishlist sections to air your dissatisfaction.

They locked out non-subscription customers (i.e. people who are still on perpetual licenses only) from commenting or contributing at all to the Wishlist section, so that should really tell you how much they value user feedback.

In any case, I truly do feel sorry for anyone who is on subscription, or contemplating getting into the Subscription model - under the impression that their subscription fees are actually going to go towards improving anything they need or want improved.

[Jp1138]

Just that such small things like this get so much space in the roadmap is worrying. Should be in some kind of "other improvements" section or just added in the update notes as a nice little touch. Really hope there´s lot of work being done under the hood preparing for the future, but I´m afraid many of perpetual users may not be there to see it if it ever comes to pass, as many will not follow into subscription 😔

[Bricklyne Clarence]

They're there because they're easy to implement.

Those are things that should have/could have been implemented 10-15 years ago, and as hidden improvement features.

They are both features that have been core basic features of Vectorworks since forever, and they(GS) are only now realizing that Archicad could benefit from stuff like that? 

Great!

Maybe if we're lucky in 20-30 year time they'll find the time to make ArchiCAD multi-monitor capable like LITERALLY all their competitors' rival software already are by default.

But at least now they can assign an intern to do these two tools and then they get to hold them up as feature improvements that anyone should be proud of, while the bulk of their resources had been spent on DDASCAD improvements and more AI claptrap nonsense.

But then they'll swear up and down the line that none of that has been taking away from the resources to improve core architectural design tools - even when the evidence is to the contrary.

[Kalib Stewart]

The revised roadmap is a nothing more than a complete and pathetic embarrassment. BIMDots has done more work for Archicad users in recent years than GS has done in the past decade.

Very clear to most of us Archicad 30 will be our last version. 

[mthd]

Hey @Kalib Stewart, have you had confirmation from CI that AC30 would be the last SSA/FWD version ? Of course it will depend on when your version is up for renewal. I am getting a strong impression that it will end with AC29 from the latest email I got from CI. Looks like if we want AC30 or more we will need to convert to a subscription at the next renewal in 2026.

[Jp1138]

My Spanish distributor told me that, at the moment, Archicad 30 would be the final perpetual license. I told them i couldnt understand how thet couldnt be 100% sure. Always in motion the future is, I suppose 😅

[mthd]

Could depend on when your 2025 renewal falls ? If it is in the final quarter of the year and AC30 is released during the final quarter of 2026 then AC30 might be the last SSA/FWD version for you ? We have been informed that 2025 is the last renewal year for SSA/FWD. Our period in this part of the world is usually by the end of Q2 and that means AC29 is it for that period.

[Jp1138]

You are right. One thing is what the last perpetual version will be and other is until when you can renew your SSA. In our case, we weren´t allowed to renew SSA this year - april is our renewal date - and were forced to subscription (but retaining the fallback option to perpetual in Archicad 30) if we wanted to get 29 and 30.

From what we were told, the options weren´t the same in all countries, but in Spain you can no longer get SSA this year.

[Kalib Stewart]

Hey, no. The only confirmation (which they acknowledged was speculation) was that AC30 would be the last perpetual version. The only way you could possibly get it with SSA would be to have your renewal between Nov-Dec. Otherwise, it will be AC29 due to SSA finishing.

Most of us subscribed for the next 3 years during the phase 1 transition to ensure we at least ended up with AC30. After the subscription period finishes, we will see how the BIM landscape is, and potentially reassess the options. This is where GS really needs to show some loyalty with AC29 and AC30's upgrades otherwise, we will all likely move on. If I'm paying Revit subscription prices, I want access to the Autodesk user network and eco system - something GS cannot provide.

Firms I have spoken to are genuinely looking at taking a break at AC30 to see if they really need to upgrade for the next few years. Half the people I know are still on AC26 so it's likely they're about to call GS's bluff. If there's no multi-monitor support by AC30 I will not even consider resubscribing. 

[mthd]

Makes complete sense to me and we can also see what future versions beyond AC30 will bring. Having AC30 as a fall back is a sort of safety net ? The onus is on GS to keep its customers on board and they can do that with a roadmap that reflects what us as customers really want developed in future versions. A direct focus on Architectural element tools would be something that would keep me on board and maybe many others too ?

[Bricklyne Clarence]

---

@Kalib Stewart wrote:

......

Firms I have spoken to are genuinely looking at taking a break at AC30 to see if they really need to upgrade for the next few years. Half the people I know are still on AC26 so it's likely they're about to call GS's bluff. If there's no multi-monitor support by AC30 I will not even consider resubscribing. 

---

There will be no multi-monitor support in AC30.

You can pretty much confidently conclude that based on GS' own statements and actions - specifically related to their Roadmap and Wishlist sections.

(Unless they were lying in those areas as well)

I base this solely on their decision to place the Multi-monitor Wish in the Wishlist section and put it's status "On Hold" (Which essentially effectively just means,.... "We're not working on this currently. We have no plans to work on it soon, or at least not for the next few versions. And it's not even in consideration for adoption at the moment" ) - even after it was voted on as a much needed feature for improvement in their recent "spring-cleaning" and having receiving among the most votes across all the wishes.

Their reasoning for doing so was even more silly (in my opinion,...) and makes no sense given all the context related to ArchiCAD itself and the company at the moment, as well as the context of software development space in which they operate in.

On the former point, ArchiCAD ALREADY IS multi-monitor capable............but only on the Mac side.
So why the disparity and why the short-rift for Windows users? (....who comprise the majority of ArchiCAD users).
This is just another example of their scattershot approach to developing features sometimes where they'll develop a new feature or tool, but it will only be available to just one segment of the user-base but not another or the rest, and usually they hinge this on the technical difficulties of maintaining the same standard across multiple platforms. Which I understand and get.

But to leave it at that state of affairs where for the longest time - spanning several versions and years - one side has a feature but the other doesn't - at some point it goes beyond the excuse that "We can't do this because there are limitations on doing so in Windows versus MacOS (...or visa versa)"
Then don't have the feature at all.

And on that factor, and also related to the latter point, the Windows platform and OS itself can't be the bottleneck here or the cause of the difficulty in having multi-monitor support on the Windows side, and this would be for the basic reason that virtuall ALL their competitor and rival software, most of whom are Windows-only software - are ALL multi-monitor capable and aware.
Even the ones under the same Nemetscheck family as they are - specifically Allplan and Vectorworks, are both multi-monitor capable - and to add salt to the wound Vectorworks like ArchiCAD is multi-platform, which means they have multi-monitor capability on BOTH platforms. So again, what is Graphisoft's excuse on dragging their feet on this?......And worse than that now, they're not even dragging their feet; by placing it "ON HOLD", it pretty much means they've indefinitely suspended any work on this.

And of course you can't raise any of these points in that same thread unless you're a current subscription/SSA customer, which means that if you're someone who's on perpetual license and happened to be one of the people who originally raised this as a wish back in the day (and are now getting updates as a result), you're S**t out of luck in even responding to their explanations. At least on the wishlist thread.

In any case, I just wanted to let you be aware that if this is what you're hinging your future use of ArchiCAD on, then you're kinda out of luck on the prospects of it becoming reality (based on their own statements and decision-making)

[Wlad222]

Thanks for your reply! Great explanation. Yes, they don't care about their users. The only thing they care about is the money flow. They have so much potential, but no, they simply don't care. When I find an alternative solution to Archicad, I am leaving... And my office. 

[Kalib Stewart]

Yes - completely unlikely. But, the principle remains. The lack of multi-monitor is killing our productivity when it comes to complex detailing and modelling. And, unless we see some MASSIVE upgrades by AC30, there is just no reason we won't move onto Revit at the same price point once our term finishes. People here like to complain about it, but I and many other firms can operate with it just fine.

SSA was good value for money (some years). This new model is awful value, and AC29 and AC30 are their only chances to keep many of us in the ecosystem at all. If I pay an extra $1000 a year for Revit but all my consultants are in it too, I'll make that back in productivity in a week anyway, before we consider the biggest firms and talent pools are on it too. We can't keep paying thousands per year for the most minimal upgrades to software we already own. Adobe's an example - another horrible subscription model, but the entry price point per year is manageable as a business.

There's not enough money in architecture to keep absorbing these ridiculous overheads and getting nothing but a search function in AC26 as a result. We will move on to making do with what we have.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

Kudos to you for bumping the multi-monitor wish request thread despite their decision to place it 'On-Hold' status.

Although I wouldn't hold out much hope that it will move them into taking it any more seriously than they currently do.

On the flip side, it does seem like public pressure and outcry might have played a part in making them change course in making the AI visualizer a "Collaborate" exclusive feature that locked everyone else (Studio users) out from being able to use it.
I'm not a fan of it myself, but if it helps other people, then good for them.

On the Multi-monitor "hold" decision point, I was thinking about it some more and something else occurred to me with regards to their decision to place it on hold.
( I would have brought this up in the Wishlist thread, but being a non-SSA user I'm locked out from commenting there).

They claimed that they discussed it among themselves and came to the conclusion that it would be too technically demanding or too complicated to carry out in the short-term as it would require a major reworking of the underlying code (paraphrasing, of course,....but something to that effect), hence the decision to put it on hold for the moment

But this raised an important question for me, whose potential possible answers don't speak too well of Graphisoft.

Are they only just now realizing this?
By which I mean, the wish has been requested and been on the (old) Wishlist forum for almost the better part of 8 years to a decade at least ( I made a wish request post of the same feature myself back in 2017, I'm pretty certain,...but I'm likewise sure I wasn't the first person to make that request. That means, at least 8 years. Conceivably 10.)

Did they discuss this among themselves and come to that conclusion when the wish first popped up around 8-10 years ago, or are they only now just broaching the issue and realizing this now?

Bear in mind, there are NO good answers to this question here as far as GS are concerned, and I'll take them one at a time.

In the first case, if they've known there's nothing they can do about this, short of a major code re-write that they're either unwilling or unable to do (for the moment)  since years ago, .......and they've never informed the many more people who've requested the same feature after that, then what does that say about how they regard their users' requesting feature improvements that they know there's no hope of them getting done, and them (GS) not bothering to inform people so that the request doesn't keep coming up unaddressed?

In the second case, if they're only just finding out and realizing now that they can't seriously look at this, let alone work on giving ArchiCAD this capability because it's only come to their attention just NOW thanks to the Wishlist "spring-cleaning" that elevated it, then what does ....that .....say about how they've essentially been ignoring their own Wishlist section and user requests for over TWO DECADES - and effectively confirming what many of us have long suspected - that GS have never had any interest in realizing or fulfilling any user wishes or feature requests - if those wishes didn't already fall in line with their own internal roadmap?

And by the same token, why should anyone have any confidence that they now take this current iteration of the Wishlist section any more seriously? Because they've addressed a few of them and place them "On-Hold"?

In the larger scheme of things, this matters because in a couple of years or less, Microsoft will release the next version of Windows - Windows 12 - while simultaneously officially ceasing support for Windows 10.
As noted earlier, all of Graphisoft's rivals and competitor products are already multi-monitor capable and on the Windows side, this was facilitated for most of them by a lot of the technical improvements that Microsoft made to the Windows graphics handling kernel in Windows 10/11.
There'll be even more improvements to the kernel of the next version of Windows - which will bring along with them even more potential for farther increased functionality in programs that can take advantage of them.

And the decision by Graphisoft to further delay bringing Archicad on par with other competitors already taking advantage of these improvement means that they'll only fall much farther behind in taking advantage of technical capabilities in not just the software side (Operating system), but also the hardware side (more powerful GPU's - which is even more ironic given that this is a graphics and visual-based program).

And all because they don't place at a high priority the necessity to upgrade or revamp their code to work better with modern tools available to them.

Which in turn increasingly will place us - the end users - even farther at a disadvantage relative to users of their rivals' software.

These decisions have cascading deleterious consequences by exponentially multiplying factors.

On its own, multi-monitor capability is not the most critical super break-point issue that needs addressing in the program, but if the way they're dealing with it is emblematic of their overall approach to how they regard and handle larger problems, then it doesn't bode well for the future prospects of this program.

[Kalib Stewart]

Yes I agree with all of this. It's not the most important feature - but it's a significant disadvantage to those of us in the detail / construction phases. Revit's live details and multiple views is brilliant for visualizing and working through junctions. GOs for skin layers and profile modifiers in composites etc are also important, as is a revamp to the topo / road /ramp tools etc etc. But we'd be here for days going through the rest. Where are our filters so we can hide things in views without 400 different layers??? WHY CAN I NOT CROP 1:25 ROOM PLANS AND ANNOTATE OUTSIDE THEM WITHOUT ALL THE WORK AROUNDS???

But the points you have raised continue to remain. They have ignored serious upgrades for years. Design options was fantastic, but to be honest, also massively overdue. MEP's been half-developed, structure's used by literally no one (ever), and the only flexible window/door tools are the Central Innovation ones. Then comes along keynotes, and while necessary, had already been 90% developed by Central Innovation too. Now BIMdots has the layers and property pallets we've been waiting for, and the 90 deg rotation shortcut, meanwhile the next big wish list stuff from GS is a 90 deg shortcut and the Add-on Store. 

Revit is hardly the model software and Autodesk is a nightmare, but regardless, by GS ignoring user's wishes for near on a decade we are falling further and further behind. We're nearing on AC30 and they need to realize very quickly if they don't play ball it will be the end of the line for many of us. We've been in a construction recession and they really think we're about to start paying more for less. Give us something meaningful, not Archicad 27.2.

The roadmap genuinely gave us hope, and then they realized it would be too much work so they moved to a subscription model and 'revamped' it again; lol. Our consultants are not moving to DDSCad or Archicad for structure anytime soon and they need to come to terms with that and get back to Architecture (their core user base).

[SenecaDesignLLC]

Pretty sure they stopped listening on version 20 or 21.

When they sell the program they claim things work. But the fact that they give up on older versions that don't do what was said?

To much farther and I believe we will see some class action lawsuits relating to their program not actually doing what was advertised.

I use v 24. And won't ever upgrade again at this point. 

We are all being swindled. 

If I can create what I have with gdl, on my own, in 10 years then they have very little room to **beep** about not fulfilling their ends of all of our contracts.

They are literally stealing from us to increase their bottom line and then gaslighting us when we try to ask for what we rightfully deserve. Based on the contracts we have agreed too.

I honestly just don't think they even know what they are doing. I wouldn't be surprised if we all get left high and dry in the next 3 to 5 years.

Oh that doesn't work? We don't care, pay us more to gain access to what we said would work and then we will half fix it and move on.

Analogy, we all bought cyber trucks and they started falling apart. The difference? We didn't get a recall to rectify the situations they put us in because of lies and cheats.

[mthd]

When they release versions that silences most of us realistic critics, then they will have achieved something really big. It would take a few versions and it is doable, if they would just follow their original roadmap goals that they published a year ago. We don’t really have the time to complain but it looks like they are lining Archicad up with Vectorworks to me. That is the impression I get anyway. 

[jl_lt]

we have nothing but time to complain. And complains we have! 

[Wlad222]

Can anyone from GS comment on this? Some feedback would be appreciated! 

@Gordana Radonic (I am really sorry for this inconvenient tag, however your role says you are "Manager, Global Community" and I thought you might help us here. Again I apologize if you are a wrong person.