Do I upgrade?

[Eric Milberger]

Question  - do I upgrade

For the cost of Revit do I upgrade ArchiCAD or Go with Revit.

All my Engineers are Revit as there are no ArchiCAD withing 300 files of  me

I also lose jobs since I am not revie or AutoCAD, and I cannot find new staff in ArchiCAD.  I miss the User Groups which I understand may com back.  However I need licensed Engineers in the state of the project..  This month is Alabama, my next is in Virginia the last in Arizona.  I also do no residential only Commercial.

Operating system used: Mac Intel-based

[KB-at-CWA]

In Australia, you will not be able to buy perpetual licenses from April 1st I believe, that gives you up version 30, if you don't want to go to subscription. The subscriptions are the most expensive way to buy Archicad, but there are features locked out if you don't subscribe.

From people I know that have changed from Archicad to Revit (usually because where they work changed over) they hated it and most people went looking for new jobs with Archicad. Its been described to me as getting out of the Ferrari and into a Fiat.

If you stick with Archicad then you need to have a good setup to exchange models through IFC, it should not be too much of an issue with Revit engineers. I find the main problem is the quality of information that comes through from Engineers is the issue. It would be great to have an engineering firm use Archicad though, as it would make interoperability pretty seamless. Right now I use none of the Structural Engineering features in Archicad, apart from identifying an element as "Load-Bearing" or not.

[Eric Milberger]

The problem is we don't have any Engineers that use Archicad.  Not finding a single one in a 300 to 500 mile radius.  I am having to double my work to accommodate my Engineers.

[Patrick M]

why are your engineers not sending IFC? link the IFC as a hotlink; update with the hotlink manager.
I am currently working on a 500,000 sq ft office park... no one is on the same platform. Well, a few of the engineers are  in Revit; but the architect is not, the fabricators are not... The GC and BIM coordination teams are in solibri.
A world of work opens up when you don't think in terms of Archicad vs Revit, and start looking at OpenBIM standards and practices.

[Eric Milberger]

Engineers don't want to bother - they are happy to work with Revit Architects and don't need the work and extra challenges.  The lose time and profit

[jl_lt]

Maybe it's time to change those engineers. 

About upgrading: there is a saying in spanish that goes 'musico pagado toca mal son',   which would be something like "paying a musician upfront makes him play badly".

So, imagine paying a company in advance 3 years of rent for something you already own in the hope of getting a better price (of rent) for the next 3 years after that, while the company commanding said payment hasn't done anything in the past 5 years that would make you believe things will get better in the near future.     Thankfully, no company would be short-sighted enough to propose such a deal, unless of course they tried to take away what you already own with some obscure and confusing language and vague promises