Are Archicad 28 new features worth it?

[4hotshoes]

I just received a promotional email for Archicad 28. I have been too busy paying attention to what AC 28 might offer us this year. The promotional says:

+	NEW lifecycle assessment tools for sustainable decision-making
+	Improved Rhino-Grasshopper connection for faster parametric design
+	Enhanced Point Cloud support for precise representation of as-built conditions
+	NEW cloud-based AI Visualizer for faster design iterations*

I assume the promotional message discusses this version's best and most potent features. However, none of these features interest me, and I have zero use for these four things. There must be more.  What else is there for the daily user that will improve our lives?

Operating system used: Mac Intel-based

[Botonis]

The new feature of 28 which is considered the main update is the keynotes.

There are some improvements in simple tasks but the question of updating or not 

is also related to whether you decide not to go on subscription in the future and stay with 

latest payed perpetual version. 

[Barry Kelly]

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Getting-started/Archicad-28/ta-p/598955

For more detail click on the link for 'new features guide' in that article.

Barry.

[alessiofazzi]

Unfortunately, last updates of archicad are useless in my opinion, graphisoft seams to focus on stuff that are useless to me. The "NEW cloud-based AI Visualizer for faster design iterations*" is not available even with a SSA contract. Will work only with a Collaborate licence.

I guess Revit will gain more customer in the future

[Botonis]

The introduction of Design Options in 27 was a game changer in the workflow.

It can even have an impact for a premature live hotlink management if you adjust the worklow to them.

If you are just referring to 28, indeed, it didn't introduced something totally new but the point is to gradually try to satisfy the needs of different users, with different experience, mentality, perception, workflow, demands.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

'No' is the simple answer to the question in your title.

The new features are not worth the description, "upgrade", ....but with ArchiCAD, if you're an architect or a designer, it's been a long long loooong while since they've had new features that actually justified upgrading to a new version.

It's the reason a lot of people were still on perpetual licenses and the reason they're normally reluctant to pay for new versions that offer them close to nothing that justifies the new version, and subsquently as a result of those declining upgrade-takers, it's the reason that Graphisoft is now compelled to switch to Subscription-only licensing model in the future and force all users to upgrade to their new versions whether they're worth it or not (and history suggests they won't be worth it)

As someone else added, the new feature that might count as an 'architect' productivity improvement feature and upgrade might have been the new Keynotes tool but hearing from people who use the CI Keynotes addon, the Graphisoft version falls far short in what a decent keynotes tool should be able to do.

So maybe that doesn't even count neither, and maybe that's the reason its not even included in that list.

And anyone who thinks that the AI visualizer tool is a tool that helps improve architect design conception and iteration process (and there seem to be a lot of them at Graphisoft who think this way), does not know how architects work or design buildings.

I appreciate the AI tool for what it is.

A new revenue source for Graphisoft (hence the reason it's a 'subscription-only' premium now) and a shiny new object to dangle for unsuspecting new users, while getting on the "AI" bandwagon  and current fad of using and doing everything 'AI' - even while they don't really seem to know how to properly leverge it for the benefit of how architects and designers actually work......and think.

And again, like you said yourself, pretty much all of those "new features" are useless not just for you, but for how the majority of architects and archicad users actually work and use their tools.

A painful read for any Graphisoft people that may be reading this, but this is what happens when you close yourself in your silos and don't listen to, or talk to your users and customers and just go off on your own tangents.

[Karl Ottenstein]

---

@Barry Kelly wrote:

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Getting-started/Archicad-28/ta-p/598955

For more detail click on the link for 'new features guide' in that article.

Barry.

---

Neither that article, nor the full AI Visualizer article that it links to, makes clear that this feature is not available to the vast majority of customers who are on permanent licenses/SSA/ArchiPlus ... but only to those who switch to the Collaborate Subscription.  I feel this is grossly false advertising and it is beyond ridiculous that so many customers have complained about this here on the Cummunity, yet Graphisoft has done nothing to correct any of the many pages that mislead customers.

[Jp1138]

At least they added an asterisk to the mail @4hotshoes got 😝😅

[mthd]

I personally appreciate the work done with distance guides and now they are enhanced in 28. The PBR “Physically Based Rendering” is also enhanced along with Design Options. So for me it was worth it. 

[Bricklyne Clarence]

False advertising and misleading marketing is nothing new where Graphisoft is concerned. Sorry to say.

I'm old enough, and long enough in the tooth as an archicad user to remember when they released - I believe it was, version 12 and the new feature tool was the Curtain Wall Tool, and the feature building chosen and used on the box cover to ostensibly advertise this new tool was the ING Building in Budapest by György Fazakas, desgined in collaboration Jean Paul Viguier.

The implication of course being that the building - which has a distinctive envelope and curtain wall deisgn - was not just designed with ArchiCAD 12, but done so particularly leveraging the new Curtain wall tool to do that.

Except the reality and truth is that not all of it was done with the curtain wall tool, since no one could figure out how to use the curtain wall to creating curving curtain walls that have panels and elements that also curve along the 'Z' axis as happend at the corner tops of this building.

Only later on did it come out that those parts of the curtain wall were not done using the curtain wall tool but rather were actually done using good old fashioned GDL scripting and modeling to create custom gdl parts.

But the implication was already made using the building as their highlight box cover buildng that this is what the curtain wall tool can do.

For the record, that was 2008 when ArchiCAD 12 was released.

It's now 2024 and the Curtain Wall tool - even with a revamp and refresh in ArchiCAD 22,(......10 years later,...I might add) - in the most recent version in ArchiCAD 28, STILL can't natively model that type of condition in a curtain wall system.

And it's not the only example of false advertising and misleading marketing that Graphisoft have indulged in over the years.

To be fair, they didn't explicitly come out and say that that building's envelope - the entirety of it anyway - was modeled using the Curtain wall tool.

But often times with advertising, it's simply enough to just leave the implication there and let the customers make the conclusion themselves.

Advertising - 101.

Just like they didn't explicitly come out and say that the AI visualizer wouldn't be available to every license owner, but rather only to the Collaborate subscribers.

In this instance, the implication was necessary and needed to help market an otherwise weak upgrade that was, and IS thin on new useful features for architects.

As always, I'm more shocked and surprised at this stage in the game that people are  shocked and surprised by such an occurence, rather than I am shocked or surprised by the occurence itself.