A friendly rant for the evening

[Anonymous]

Why am I writing this?
Recently I talked to some friendly architecture offices about the features of the upcoming ArchiCAD 13. They were worried about compability with Mac OS X.6. They plan to buy new hardware (so do I) and we started to speak our mind ...
So the following text was created in a certain mood and is meant polemically. At the same time constructive. We're not unthankful. But people said I should speak up in the official ArchiCAD forum. I am more an outsider without the usual tunnel vision etc.

1) The new features of ArchiCAD 13

- Teamwork 2.0
Only useful for larger offices, all people I spoke to shook their heads. Well, we know small offices are in decline so on first glance ArchiCAD 13 seems to cater the big ones. The feature description lacks information. On second glance you realise that teamwork features are already useful for a team of two who live apart. Unfortunately nowhere is to be seen how the administration of the server works. So why doesn't graphisoft give us a feature that is so well marketable given the current marketing buzzwords? You offer people server access, account: your-office@graphisoft-team.com, file storage, encrypted files and traffic. Charge people per month or as part of the licence. Login from ArchiCAD. Administration from ArchiCAD or via a web interface.
Teamwork "for the rest of us".

- Oriented views
People told me nobody would use it, too disorienting.

- Annotated schedule drawings
People told me nobody would use it, too time consuming.

- Data exchange with engineers
People told me nobody would use it, costs too much time. And why do the work of a stress analyst?

- Location-independent licence management
OK, so as in Artlantis. Well, that's what you get if you still use hardware dongles. In the past a lot of applications had that, now ArchiCAD is the only one remaining.

- 64 Bit
Well, Windows only.

2) Speed

First time I was shown ArchiCAD was back in 1993 on an Apple Quadra. I learned AC on a Performa 6300/100, somewhere in 1996. The latter had a 2 GB hard disc, today my 2009 iMac has 4 GB RAM.
Still, ArchiCAD today feels just as fast or slow as back then. Over the years you got more and more abstraction layers while the core of the software remains untouched, and you just added feature after feature. Open a complex input dialog in AC12 and you can literally see the abstraction layers communicating. Well, it's a common phenomenon, goes for other software products, too. No, not for all of them.
Seems to me ArchiCAD needs a "no new features" release similar to Mac OS X.6. Do we really need a major release every year? Wouldn't that require a different nomenclature? ArchiCAD 2009, 2010, 2011. ArchiCAD Ultimate, Business, Team Edition?

3) ArchiCAD on the Mac

What's the state of Graphisoft and Apple? In the early Ninetees I thought ArchiCAD would be a Mac-only thing. Apple built high-eng workstations only, in the written ArchiCAD manual you only had Mac screenshots and every office I knew had Macs. Today in the manual you got only Windows screens, on the website only Mac screens. When Apple introduced Mac OS X it all seemed fine and dandy - promotion Apple together with Graphisoft, Graphisoft on the Apple website. This seems to be gone for good. Which is weird given how Apple has spread. What's the matter? New Nemetschek policy? No red phone to Cupertino?

The Virtual Building Explorer (VBE) is still not out for Mac half a year after the Windows release (but hey: a Linux version announced). ArchiCAD 13 is 64 Bit only on Windows. In the german official forum a developer says that's due to Apple killing the 64 Bit version of Carbon. Maybe. First time I heard there ever was a 64 Bit version of Carbon planned. Since 2002 Apple says to developers to switch to Cocoa. I always expected Adobe to be the last company to adopt, but now it's Graphisoft. I am a C++/Python programmer myself, but I never did system level programming, yet I feel the pain of developers given Apple's transition frenzy (PPC, Intel - Carbon, Cocoa). I know that Cocoa programmers are hard to find and time is sparse. Maybe we Mac users have no ground to complain on. Nevertheless something has to happen here.

Regarding Mac OS X.6 you hear a lot of users complaining. That was to be expected given the experience with past major OS X releases. Graphisoft Support via mail and developers in the official german forum say there is a memory leak in OS X.6. I never heard of that before, nowhere. There is nothing in the OS X.6.1 release notes about this. I can find no thread in the official Apple forums.

I don't think things would be that much worse if ArchiCAD was all platform-agnostic Java. At least you can find programers for that. SPSS did it. The last Mac version of the popular statistics software was version 13, PowerPC only. They re-programed the whole software in Java for version 16 and thanks to that version 16 was automatically on Mac and Linux.
The official german forum says, they are re-programing the Teamserver for Cocoa in ArchiCAD 14. That means: Cocoa for the whole app in ArchiCAD 15. Release date? 2011, I suppose. When OS X.7 comes out. Which - unlike Mac OS X.6 - will sport colorful new features that make people adopt the release. Which will propably be 64 Bit only, so Apple dares.

4) GUI (General User Interface)

The GUI of ArchiCAD seems so yesterday to me. Wouldn't be all that bad if it was fast. Sure, on a productivity app you don't change the GUI over night. But right now ArchiCAD looks like from 1999. No, ArchiCAD doesn't have to look like Cinema4D. Still speed goes with productivity. Why doesn't AC use tabbed windows? Right now you got those dialog boxes with those little arrows, you click the arrow, a new area in the dialog draws open, the old one goes away, the window moves, you have to re-orient your eyes.
Why is there no multi-user support in ArchiCAD? Like so many other software products you still think only one person uses the computer.

5) Libraries

The library content is so old it's an insult. The only larger update I remember where new fassade elements. The windows for example are the same like 15 years ago. Same goes for the textures. Every release the same thing: Concrete 10, Concrete 11, Concrete 12 ... Concrete 13?
Sure ArchiCAD doesn't have to explode with high quality 2D and 3D objects. There's a third party market for this. But did you ever try to incorporate their content into ArchiCAD or Artlantis? These companies offer their content for a multitude of software products so their format does not necessarily fit ArchiCAD. As a result you get all those specular, diffuse, bump maps for free. I don't know what's the solution here, just think about it.
Not only the library content is outdated, so it the management - it's excessive, intransparent and again not made for multiple users.

6) Real-time visualisation

Somewhere in 2007 I wrote an e-mail to Graphisoft if the company is getting behind the bandwagon that is visualisation in real time. I argued that no one could understand, why you have to wait half an hour for a mediocre rendering while your kids enjoy high end graphics on their gaming console. The replied, they were working on that.

The result is the Virtual Building Explorer (VBE). Well, not as impressive as I wished it to be, but it's a product. More importantly it involved some much needed geometry optimization. For those not familar with the subject, here's some explanation. Every architect wishes for real time visualization, where you show your client a walk through your work in photo-realistic quality. Right now you can export your ArchiCAD model to some 3D format, conver that format, import it into a free gaming engine, write a script and done. Problem is the geometry that ArchiCAD produces. As it is you got a long, 4-story wall. Should be one piece of geometry with holes for the windows. In ArchiCAD it isn't, it's 20 little pieces with 180+ degrees angles, no triangulation, too many polygons. Unfit for real time.

If you are like me doing visualisation, you got three choices. When I started, there was Artlantis (I started I think with version 4), which I still use today. Recently you got Cinema4D. Third alternative: you ditch the export plugins and build the object in a 3D app of your choice. Based on the documents of an architect. From scratch. That's a weekend. So what I would like to have is a one button solution, that optimizes the geometry and exports a common 3D format. Third party developers can take it from there.
Or, Graphisoft does it on it's own. There are a lot of free 3D frameworks out there with a liberal licence. I've done it with Panda3D. Unity3D is a commercial example: http://unity3d.com/gallery/developer-profiles/architecture-and-viz/ZeroFractal

7) No scripting interface

I'd like to have one for ArchiCAD. Cinema4D and Blender use Python. Sure the average user wouldn't script their ArchiCAD. But the average user would use scripts from third party developers. And large offices would appreciate a scriptable ArchiCAD for automatisation. ArchiCAD already has a scripting language, but I never heard or saw somebody using it.

8) Lightworks rendering engine

I'm not so sure if ArchiCAD really needs a built-in photorealistic rendering engine. Sure you need a 2D and 3D engine, but why photorealistic? For prints, applications and even competitions you don't really need photo realism. And if you do, there's Artlantis and Cinema4D. You have to teach yourself both, which is something no one does even if you plan to do so a thousand times ... but you have to learn Lightworks too to get good results. Talking to people I heard students use it a lot.
Are there other arguments then that? Think about it.

9) Community

Why is there a different look for graphisoft.com and graphisoft.de? Why are there seperated forums for german and english users? Why can't I feel a community around a 15 year old software? "used by more than 100,000 customers", according to the Nemetschek website - can one feel it? Yes, there's a Wiki. Which of the Wiki articles are editorial - read: reliable - and which are from customers? Why does one have to register to edit the Wiki? There already is a registration mechanism - your licence! Edit the Wiki from inside ArchiCAD!

***

Well, ArchiCAD is a good piece of software. After 15 years things stood the test of time. Right now - due to a sideline job - I am learning AutoCAD. Way worse.

Nevertheless there's enough room for debate.

P.S. This posting is a direct translation of a post I did yesterday in the german official forums, with minor changes. This posting is meant as a polemic rant, yet I think it serves as a basis for a debate.
I find Graphisoft's communication policy lacking recently. Why is there no news item on the official website saying that you tested your software on Mac OS X.6 and all bugs coming up are Apple's fault? Why is there no website explaing that 64 Bit is not terribly important for average users and therefore not a high priority?

[Dwight]

I know what you mean:
my boss may be an idiot, but at least there's job security.

[Anonymous]

Another advantage of being a one man show is that you get to shag your bosses wife.
On the other hand, you should keep an eye on your wife...

[Erika Epstein]

Krippahl wrote:
Another advantage of being a one man show is that you get to shag your bosses wife.
On the other hand, you should keep an eye on your wife...

[Dennis Lee]

Ok...guess what I have is better than a one man company, I go to bed with the (one and only) female employee and the boss's wife every night!