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?

[Stuart Smith]

KurtM wrote:
- 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.

Where do people get this idea that Teamwork is only for "big" offices? Even in our small practice (3-4 AC users), we routinely use Teamwork on all but the tiniest projects. Especially in the CD phase when there is lots of 2D stuff to work on like details and wall sections, or on large projects where parts of the plan can be cordoned off with a marquee, or to explore multiple options with draft files. We did all this despite the clunkiness and frustration associated with reserving workspaces. Teamwork 2 seems like it will make workflow much smoother.

[Thomas Holm]

KurtM wrote:
...I find Graphisoft's communication policy lacking recently...

Good rant. Food for thought. For me it boils down to the quote above. I think most of GS's decisions seem to be sound and with a lot of support points, at least those that are known.
Their market and user communication is lacking however, and it hurts them. And us. We all need more info, more docs, more policy!

[Karl Ottenstein]

A respectful rant.... and a lot of work to make the excellent translation I imagine. (I just took a look at the German forums ... which are hard to find now that GS no longer links to all international forums from their web site.)

Some response in a little bit, as I have a different opinion on some of the many topics you raised. (I do agree with many others.)

Karl

[Karl Ottenstein]

KurtM wrote:
- Teamwork 2.0
Only useful for larger offices, all people I spoke to shook their heads.

Not true. You'll have to see and try it to understand. TW2 makes joint work reasonable even with just two people, particularly at document deadlines. With the old TW, it was just too hard to decide what to reserve when you were working all over the project trying to clean up little things for the final push. With TW2, it is fluid - two people can go through the redlines without stepping on each other. Instead of getting stressed out, a solo guy can call in a friend for a couple of hours to help out.

Unfortunately nowhere is to be seen how the administration of the server works.

We have been talking about that, bit by bit, in the Teamwork forum here and in the new ArchiCAD Wiki articles. That this 'official' international forum is in English (as are the articles) limits access to many users who either may not read English, or may generally visit their local-language forums because of language convenience and camaraderie.

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".

Frankly, I think this would be terrible. Graphisoft is not offering a service, at an extra fee, but is offering software that users can flexibly deploy in a variety of ways on their own hardware. In particularly, while remote access to a TW project is satisfactory over the internet - it is essentially instantaneous over a local network. Thus, the BIM Server belongs on that local network which hosts the majority of team users... not at a remote server farm or cloud.

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

Interesting, as this is one of the oldest wishes that I know of ... particularly from people who have moved to ArchiCAD from AutoCAD. ArchiCAD has always had rotated grids and other means for working on portions of a project that are an angle to the screen rectangle. The oriented views simply let you avoid neck strain and/or more easily visualize the space by rotating the project view to be orthogonal to the screen...with annotation adjusting automatically. This orientation can be memorized with views, which is convenient for construction documents.

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

This is also a very old wish item, and there is no time consumption - it is automatic, but can be manually adjusted. Commercial projects, in particular, in many countries have needed this annotation - and have had to go through various tricks with unlinked drawings to accomplish it until now.

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

Where is any extra cost? The new feature is a library of steel (etc) profiles that can be assigned to the beam or column tools. This is not just the work of the structural engineer - the architect must have them modeled exactly in the project in order for all other building components to fit properly. (In spite of having these new profiles, though, the beam and column tools do not have the wished-for features of better control of their end angles.)

- 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.

No, it is not as in Artlantis. As with TW2, Graphisoft is not making you dependent on any service. With Artlantis, if their license server is down (which has happened more than a few times to me), you cannot deactivate or reactivate your license. Plus, you have to have an internet connection to do it anyway. With the new 'floating licenses' possible with the new Codemeter protection key, the allocation of licenses is completely under user-network control. And, better, licenses can be set to expire - so you do not have to worry about a user forgetting to 'deactivate' (return) a license as you do with Artlantis. With Artlantis, if a user forgets, has the machine stolen, or whatever you have to contact Abvent with subsequent delays.

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?

From what I know, this was purely a move by Apple as part of their initial OS X marketing - it was in their best interests to show that they had a significant CAD program available for OS X. I would guess that Apple does not need Graphisoft for their marketing purposes anymore.

The Virtual Building Explorer (VBE) is still not out for Mac half a year after the Windows release

Disappointing, I agree. [Edit: VBE on Mac is scheduled for October 2009 delivery]

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.

It is true. 64-bit Carbon was dropped by Apple in 2007. You need to do some more reading. There are links to articles in the various threads here complaining about why there is no 64-bit Mac support yet.

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.

And, yet it is true that 10.6.0 had a memory corruption issue that is fixed in 10.6.1 Piranesi experienced the same problem. Graphisoft determined that it was related to the standard File Open and Save dialogs. Proof is in the pudding: if Graphisoft changed no code, and the bug is fixed in 10.6.1, then there must have been a bug in 10.6.0, eh? Release notes rarely list all fixes.

The GUI of ArchiCAD seems so yesterday to me. Wouldn't be all that bad if it was fast.

I agree that it is a little dated, but it doesn't usually bother me, as I use shortcut keys whenever possible. It takes a long time in recent versions for the various dialog boxes to appear on the screen - things that were instantaneous in older versions. I find that frustrating ... and agree with you about eyes bouncing around the screen with the panels that collapse and expand.

Why is there no multi-user support in ArchiCAD? Like so many other software products you still think only one person uses the computer

.

Huh? ArchiCAD is (nearly) completely multi-user. If each user has their own account on the machine, each user has their own settings, cache, etc. If you are trying to share a single user account with multiple users, then of course you will have problems. The customized Work Environment can let any user load their preferred settings on any machine or account, too.

The library content is so old it's an insult.

Hard to disagree with you there.

As a result you get all those specular, diffuse, bump maps for free.

Artlantis 2 and above let you easily use all of those maps to create new shaders. In ArchiCAD, you can use most of those maps within the LightWorks settings.

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.

This is not the geometry that ArchiCAD produces ... as much as it is how the particular export add-on that you used converted the internal (smooth) geometry.

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.

ArchiCAD does not have a scripting language. We have a thread on these forums from earlier in the year - this topic of scripting comes up about once a year - in which I asked the people advocating for scripting to list a number of things that they felt could be usefully scripted in ArchiCAD. There were no real responses. If you have some good ideas, please find that thread - or start a new one - and list them.

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!

The Wiki was open for a long time ... and I was about the only user who was contributing. But, we had a daily barrage of spam posts - and so spent any time that might have been spent on content cleaning out spam instead. It was just out of control and unprofessional. The current Wiki is reliable with content that can be trusted. Articles covering various aspects of 13 are being developed and released day by day and the overall organization of the Wiki will be worked on over the next few months. Registration is still necessary, as Graphisoft has no idea who belongs to any particular license (in general) - but it is a very interesting idea to link Wiki access to the license key.

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?

I agree. Both of these issues are discussed in Wiki articles, but they should be on the main web site News column (etc)...with RSS feed.

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for this amazing series of posts...

Karl wrote:

The Virtual Building Explorer (VBE) is still not out for Mac half a year after the Windows release

Disappointing, I agree.

If you allow me Karl... Just a little update (breaking news!)... This one is solved here.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Yes, thanks, Paulo! Very good news indeed. 🙂

Karl

[Anonymous]

Stuart wrote:
Where do people get this idea that Teamwork is only for "big" offices? Even in our small practice (3-4 AC users), we routinely use Teamwork on all but the tiniest projects.

Well that's what I am saying too! Sure it's of use for small teams, but it seems Graphisoft does not communicate that. In Germany, and surely in other countries too, small offices are in decline and so you got your usual envy, pessimism and what not. And what about setup? The average architect is not exactly a tech geek and is not willing or able to spend weekends to learn (my peer group by the way are enthusiasts). So while it might be reasonable to set up a server on LAN, what about WAN setup? I think Graphisoft themselves should offer a one-click solution here.
Maybe users don't want that, OK, fine with me. So what was the last time Graphisoft tried to make a broad survey among their customers where they want their software to go?

Karl wrote:
Frankly, I think this would be terrible. Graphisoft is not offering a service, at an extra fee, but is offering software that users can flexibly deploy in a variety of ways on their own hardware. In particularly, while remote access to a TW project is satisfactory over the internet - it is essentially instantaneous over a local network. Thus, the BIM Server belongs on that local network which hosts the majority of team users... not at a remote server farm or cloud.

Well, the extra fee was just an idea, I also wrote alternatively make it part of the licence. But internet performance is an aspect I did not think of, you're right here. Additionaly, many workstations in offices might not even be connected to the internet for various reasons. Still I think people would think more positively about teamwork features, if Graphisoft would do the dirty work.

Karl wrote:
Interesting, as this is one of the oldest wishes that I know of ... particularly from people who have moved to ArchiCAD from AutoCAD. ArchiCAD has always had rotated grids and other means for working on portions of a project that are an angle to the screen rectangle. The oriented views simply let you avoid neck strain and/or more easily visualize the space by rotating the project view to be orthogonal to the screen...with annotation adjusting automatically. This orientation can be memorized with views, which is convenient for construction documents.

Yeah I know from the Wishlist in the german forum that this has been a request, but all people I spoke too said they wouldn't use it (or turn their head right now).

Karl wrote:
This is also a very old wish item, and there is no time consumption - it is automatic, but can be manually adjusted. Commercial projects, in particular, in many countries have needed this annotation - and have had to go through various tricks with unlinked drawings to accomplish it until now.

Hm, maybe, I only repeat what I was told.

Karl wrote:
Where is any extra cost? The new feature is a library of steel (etc) profiles that can be assigned to the beam or column tools. This is not just the work of the structural engineer - the architect must have them modeled exactly in the project in order for all other building components to fit properly. (In spite of having these new profiles, though, the beam and column tools do not have the wished-for features of better control of their end angles.)

Sounds reasonable - a feature for people who need it, which is good of course.

Karl wrote:
No, it is not as in Artlantis. As with TW2, Graphisoft is not making you dependent on any service. With Artlantis, if their license server is down (which has happened more than a few times to me), you cannot deactivate or reactivate your license. Plus, you have to have an internet connection to do it anyway. With the new 'floating licenses' possible with the new Codemeter protection key, the allocation of licenses is completely under user-network control. And, better, licenses can be set to expire - so you do not have to worry about a user forgetting to 'deactivate' (return) a license as you do with Artlantis. With Artlantis, if a user forgets, has the machine stolen, or whatever you have to contact Abvent with subsequent delays.

Well this is all news to me, not good if you have to be a forum reader to know all this. As a long-time Artlantis user I know the online mechanism has issues. Nevertheless you will have to admit that online activation and hardware licences at the same time seems contradictory.

Karl wrote:
From what I know, this was purely a move by Apple as part of their initial OS X marketing - it was in their best interests to show that they had a significant CAD program available for OS X. I would guess that Apple does not need Graphisoft for their marketing purposes anymore.

True, but I don't mean just marketing. I well know of Apple's inconsistent policy regarding developers - you give them stage presence when you need them, Apple commits to a certain problem and after six months just drops it.
The Nemetschek thing was meant polemically of course, as was the other stuff. But the core of the matter holds true - given Nemetschek's buying spree a lot of ArchiCAD users I speak to thought or still think that they soon will have to learn a different software because Nemetschek will discontinue it.

Karl wrote:
It is true. 64-bit Carbon was dropped by Apple in 2007. You need to do some more reading. There are links to articles in the various threads here complaining about why there is no 64-bit Mac support yet.

Well, I do follow Mac news websites. Still I did not know there was a 64 Bit Carbon planned. My argument still holds up, developers falsely based their schedule on the assumption, Apple would hold Carbon up to speed with Cocoa. Which they did propably longer then they should have. Again, I am not even saying this is Graphisoft's fault. Graphisoft doesn't have to be afraid of stepping on Apple's toes here, so they should just explain on your website who's fault it is. Maybe not on the start page of the website. Maybe on some dev blog. Just something so people reading the AC13 feature list aren't turned off.

Karl wrote:
Huh? ArchiCAD is (nearly) completely multi-user. If each user has their own account on the machine, each user has their own settings, cache, etc. If you are trying to share a single user account with multiple users, then of course you will have problems. The customized Work Environment can let any user load their preferred settings on any machine or account, too.

Yeah, but tying the user management in a software to the system user management of the OS looks to me like a half-hearted solution. I'm not saying AC needs a full-blown user management, but something in AC itself. Logout of the current system user is overkill, there are usually other applications then AC running.

Karl wrote:
Artlantis 2 and above let you easily use all of those maps to create new shaders. In ArchiCAD, you can use most of those maps within the LightWorks settings.

Well you and I know how to use third party content in Artlantis, but who else does? The advanced users in the Atl forum do (where I by the way have been an active user a while ago). It's still to complicated to import things into Artlantis (not the topic here) or into ArchiCAD. Often you get 3D objects in 3DS or C4D or obj format. I don't know the solution to all of this, I'm just saying this is an issue.

Karl wrote:
This is not the geometry that ArchiCAD produces ... as much as it is how the particular export add-on that you used converted the internal (smooth) geometry.

I don't think that my assessment is terribly off, that AC produces unfit geometry. I did a lot of experimentation with export modules and indeed you got better or worse results - relatively. Don't know about the exchange with Cinema4D (don't own the architectural edition and don't plan to). But even if the C4D export improves geometry people shouldn't have to own C4D, it should work with the Obj/Wavefront or 3DStudio format too, since those formats are imported by free 3D frameworks.

Karl wrote:
ArchiCAD does not have a scripting language. We have a thread on these forums from earlier in the year - this topic of scripting comes up about once a year - in which I asked the people advocating for scripting to list a number of things that they felt could be usefully scripted in ArchiCAD. There were no real responses. If you have some good ideas, please find that thread - or start a new one - and list them.

Well, I do see why scripting is not a priority. I would play with it, especially in regards to real time visualisation. On the other hand your approach has it's flaws. People might get ideas for scripting after it is in as a feature, not the other way around.

Karl wrote:
The Wiki was open for a long time ... and I was about the only user who was contributing. But, we had a daily barrage of spam posts - and so spent any time that might have been spent on content cleaning out spam instead. It was just out of control and unprofessional. The current Wiki is reliable with content that can be trusted. Articles covering various aspects of 13 are being developed and released day by day and the overall organization of the Wiki will be worked on over the next few months.

Well those are problems that all Wikis have. And I think that more users would contribute if 1) they knew of the Wiki, 2) could edit it without registration from inside ArchiCAD, 3) could illustrate their writing with a pic taken directly inside the app etc. Of course I know the concept has it's flaws. On an average day you're happy if you got your work done and then you wouldn't spend time on letting other users know what you just learned. But some potential is there.

[Anonymous]

KurtM wrote:
Only useful for larger offices, all people I spoke to shook their heads. Well, we know small offices are in decline

In decline? News to me, we are thriving. Maybe in a large city small offices are in decline, but not everyone lives in a city...



And we use teamwork all the time. 5 people in the office, 3 ArchiCAD users.

[Anonymous]

Many friends from large firms I used to be with have now lost their jobs. One great thing about working solo is that it's hard to fire yourself. So, I always have work. Even if it is doing the dishes.