ARCHICAD 20 Announced

[Laszlo Nagy]

See the official announcement here:

http://www.graphisoft.com/info/news/press_releases/archicad-20-a-fresh-look-at-bim.html

There are already a few clips that show what is new:

http://archicad.com/en/

[Mjules]

Hi,

Too bad ! The time has come for Graphisoft to hear from their clients around the globe.

[Anonymous]

Cary wrote:
Regarding the lackluster outdated cartoonish archicad library....I look at my architect friends/competitors using Revit and manufacturers are running full tilt to provide them with their products as "library" parts for their models. When so many things that go into the building are specified to not have this Catalog" available to us is punishing!!!!! Archicad needs to be more proactive getting manufacturers to do GDL....and or gets us an .rfa converter. Some obscure European commodity manufacturers products in GDL serves no useful function here in the states. Sorry for the rant but if the guys in Budapest sat in my seat they would know how truly important this is in Building Information Modeling scheme of things.

Regarding Library Parts as a user of Chief Architect a US based CAD product. Lots of Designers and Architects use this program for its extensive US library and its cabinet library and cabinet making ability is far superior to ArchiCAD. Remembering that this program is primarily used for residential housing and light commercial work. It does have a library of commercial US objects too.

If GS put more work into international library part BIM file imports we all benefit greatly.

[Anonymous]

Cary wrote:
Is there a legal reason why GraphiSoft can't or will not provide an .RFA convertor inside of ArchiCAD. The people who watch the board who would know the answer to this question remain silent about this. It is a HUGE downside to working in ArchiCAD. Would GraphiSoft make it happen to make BIG happy? Anyhow if I were in the market for a BIM program today I would not choose archicad for this reason. Cheers

Cary,
The Autodesk .RFA file format is a proprietary format that would not be licensed for Graphisoft to use (would you give your competition the keys to your IP?) so would need to be reverse engineered. And seeing that Autodesk change the format for each release a huge amount of resources would be wasted each year.
Scott

[Anonymous]

sboydturner wrote:
Cary,
The Autodesk .RFA file format is a proprietary format that would not be licensed for Graphisoft to use (would you give your competition the keys to your IP?) so would need to be reverse engineered. And seeing that Autodesk change the format for each release a huge amount of resources would be wasted each year.
Scott

That the world operates to .rfa and Autodesk keeps Archicad and other BIM competitors at bay makes business sense for Autodesk. That Graphisoft's response to this is so inept is telling. It is difficult for my not so nimble mind to imagine that the .rfa file format changes so dramatically year to year as to render manufacturers objects unusable on such brief time scales. Graphisoft is always touting Archicad's ability to play well with others thru IFC. So there is no way to use IFC as a front door to RFA? Cheers

[Eduardo Rolon]

The RFA changes format so "radically" that it is not compatible to previous versions of itself. Try opening a 2017 Revit file in 2016. So yes Autodesk will not make this easy and with their new policy of changing stuff at the 6 month cycle GS would need to keep a team just for this and then the complaints will be that they are waisting to much effort on keeping RFA import not broken.

And AC works so good with IFC that if the owner of the RFA file you want just opens it and hits export to IFC you just need to open it in AC and you are done.

[Anonymous]

ejrolon wrote:
The RFA changes format so "radically" that it is not compatible to previous versions of itself. Try opening a 2017 Revit file in 2016. So yes Autodesk will not make this easy and with their new policy of changing stuff at the 6 month cycle GS would need to keep a team just for this and then the complaints will be that they are waisting to much effort on keeping RFA import not broken.

And AC works so good with IFC that if the owner of the RFA file you want just opens it and hits export to IFC you just need to open it in AC and you are done.

On the planet I live asking friends with revit to download catalog items which I need in my project and export them to me in some file format on a regular basis is not realistic. What I need is a relatively painless way to get free and available real products in model form downloaded from manufacturers websites and into my archicad project. What is the possibility of that? What I hear is archicad is a great program, plays well with others, and I am $hit out of luck. The guys in Budapest are really smart...I find it hard to imagine that if they made this a priority they couldn't construct, design, facilitate an elegant way to make this happen.

[Anonymous]

So if I am a manufacturer of light fixtures for instance and I have made my product offering available in accurately modeled and data rich form in revit's .rfa format....I have to reformat my catalog every 6 months? If that is the case that would be a WOW!

[Eduardo Rolon]

The main problem is that they cannot it is a battle that they will never win since they will need to reverse engineer the RVT format at a minimum every 6 months and it might be illegal. For reference rememember the "iPod wars" when everybody was trying to crack apples mp4 format.

RFA files are controlled by Autodesk not GS so just ask the companies that produce the content to give you IFC files or 3DS or DWG or OBJ. (I know you will write that this is not possible.)

The main problem is not RFA files is that the companies are producing files in a format that is not generic and if we don't ask for IFC files from them or if we give them a easy way out everybody looses. This is why in the UK they specified and created (still in progress http://www.nationalbimlibrary.com and this other might be interesting too http://www.buildingsmart-tech.org/future/old/ifc-future-extensions/project-proposals/ol-1-object-lib...) IFC library for use in all their government projects. Because of this Autodesk was forced to improve their IFC capabilities. Because of this there is more IFC files for us to use.

---
And if all of the content you need to use is in RFA format and you don't have a designed workflow to get it reliably into Archicad then it just might be that you are using the wrong tool for your job. I have my workflow even though in 13 years I only have to use it a couple of times and the content i needed was not worth it.

By your signature you are using AC since 2004 at that time there was hardly any RFA objects around. What was your workflow then?

[Eduardo Rolon]

Cary wrote:
So if I am a manufacturer of light fixtures for instance and I have made my product offering available in accurately modeled and data rich form in revit's .rfa format....I have to reformat my catalog every 6 months? If that is the case that would be a WOW!

If the catalogue was made with RVT 2017 and you have an older version then you might not be able to open it.
So it is not the catalogue maker it is the user that gets the problem.

Anyway this has derailed the topic so I will leave it at that. You can create a wish and a Poll if you want.

[Anonymous]

ejrolon wrote:

Cary wrote:
So if I am a manufacturer of light fixtures for instance and I have made my product offering available in accurately modeled and data rich form in revit's .rfa format....I have to reformat my catalog every 6 months? If that is the case that would be a WOW!

If the catalogue was made with RVT 2017 and you have an older version then you might not be able to open it.
So it is not the catalogue maker it is the user that gets the problem.

Anyway this has derailed the topic so I will leave it at that. You can create a wish and a Poll if you want.

To correct your interpretation of my history, I purchased Archicad 4.1 in April of 1996. Sorry you find this topic a derailer. Every upgrade this millennium (and I have upgraded every time) I hear folks complain about the stair tool. Regarding workflow...in 1996 I didn't use a cell phone or BIMx, nor heard about IFC. As no one else on the board seems to find this important I will cease and desist. For the record I contacted a lighting manufacturer over a year ago who has his catalog on the site Modlar in revit .rfa only. He wants to make it available for Archicad users in GDL. I connected him with someone at graphisoft. Nothing happened. Cheers