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/

[Zoltan Fuchs]

New question about Export/Import Property Value function:

1. Which field used for matching data to ARCHICAD elements when import excel?
2. What will be happen at import when consultant rearranged data rows or columns?
3. Can use any other properties and parameter to import/export (except what defined by model) other than Element Properties?
eg. IFC parameters or Object parameters?

Thanks in advance

[Laszlo Nagy]

Zoltan wrote:
New question about Export/Import Property Value function:

1. Which field used for matching data to ARCHICAD elements when import excel?

When exporting the Excel file, the GUIDs (Global Unique Identifiers) of the Element Properties are written out in the first row. This row will be hidden in the Excel file. When importing the Excel ARCHICAD identifies the Element Properties by their GUIDs.

2. What will be happen at import when consultant rearranged data rows or columns?

If you rearrange them so whole Columns are moved or copy-pasted, then the GUIDs in the hidden first row will stay in the correct position relative to the Element Property data and so it will still import correctly and data will be imported into the correct Element Property.
You can also modify the names of the Element Property columns (which are in the 2nd row of the Excel), that will not change anything since the GUIDs in the hidden first row will stay the same.

3. Can use any other properties and parameter to import/export (except what defined by model) other than Element Properties?
eg. IFC parameters or Object parameters?

I think this solution works specifically with Element Properties only. If I look into the exported Excel file I see GUIDs only in the columns of Element Properties. Which means all other columns will be disregarded when importing these Excel files. The new menu commands doing this are also pretty specific (Export Property Values from Schedule - Import Property Values into Elements).

[Zoltan Fuchs]

Thanks Laszlo for the detailed explanation.
All of new features are promising, we'll see how they works on production environment.

[Anonymous]

Cary wrote:
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?

How about the bimcomponents.com portal being able to upload revit models, and converting them for the catalogue? Maybe their website server could programatically control (via something like AutoIT) a Windows virtual machine running a single copy of Revit, running on their server, to legitimately do the conversion for us... without having to reverse engineer anything!....???

[Bricklyne Clarence]

peter_h wrote:

Cary wrote:
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?

How about the bimcomponents.com portal being able to upload revit models, and converting them for the catalogue? Maybe their website server could programatically control (via something like AutoIT) a Windows virtual machine running a single copy of Revit, running on their server, to legitimately do the conversion for us... without having to reverse engineer anything!....???

I foresee lots of sticky legal, commercial and Intellectual property rights issues and problems with such a proposal.


It's a pity people are having to resort to figure out ways to export library objects from a competitor's product and library, to use in our own program, due to the shortcomings that exist in our own program.

Shortcomings, I might add, which people are constantly asking to have addressed year after year either directly or indirectly (improvement and enhancement of the program's parametric library object creation capabilities and general interface).

These things tend not to be uncorrelated.

[Robby]

I too find it irritating that I am unable to find most of the objects that we would want to use in the USA in Archicad format. Doubly irritating that these same objects are however available for Revit.
But to be clear, these objects do not come from the Revit native Libraries but rather from the manufacturers themselves. Therefore to ascribe the lack of USA objects to the shortcomings of Archicad (the software) is inaccurate.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

Robby wrote:
I too find it irritating that I am unable to find most of the objects that we would want to use in the USA in Archicad format. Doubly irritating that these same objects are however available for Revit.
But to be clear, these objects do not come from the Revit native Libraries but rather from the manufacturers themselves. Therefore to ascribe the lack of USA objects to the shortcomings of Archicad (the software) is inaccurate.

I wasn't referring to (just) the lack of USA objects but rather the lack of objects in general.

And it's undeniable that a large reason for that disparity in general (whether those objects come from the manufacturers themselves or from other third party and independent modellers) is due in part to the fact that it's easier to model parametric objects in Revit's family creator than it is to correspondingly learn how to GDL code and create the same objects (with the same level of parametricity and intelligence) in ArchiCAD.

There's no inaccuracy about this statement - it's just a fact.

And if I'm a manufacturer or a supplier looking to provide my products in digital format, in addition to the fact that in places like North America, most of your prospective market-base will likely be Revit users, which of the two software due you think it will be cost effective to devote the resources to learning and providing a digital library format of your products in?

To frame it in another way:
Take a look at the BIMcomponents portal that Graphisoft initiated a couple of years back for an online repository of library objects created by users.

A large number of those objects are objects that were basically objects created in other software (typically Sketchup) and converted to ArchiCAD's gsm library format as opposed to objects natively created in ArchiCAD complete with full parametric intelligence.

Do you think that's by accident?

To try to deny that ArchiCAD's own shortcomings play a significant role in the dearth of objects available for users to use outside of what they provide in the native library is likewise disingenuous IMHO.

[Robby]

pffffttt disingenious? Sounds like more speculative nonsense...I can see where this is going....no thanks....

[Bricklyne Clarence]

Robby wrote:
pffffttt disingenious? Sounds like more speculative nonsense...I can see where this is going....no thanks....

Brilliant.

Thanks for enthralling us with your invaluable pearls of wisdom.

[gpowless]

With the direct import & conversion of all Sketchup models into ARCHICAD 20 there is no need for manufacturers to supply objects for ARCHICAD format anymore.