Anybody out there happily using MEP 28?

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

I have only heard horrible things about MEP 27&28. Anybody managed to use MEP 28 productively?

[tomswons]

No, its terrible, 27 is beyond useless, 28 gets bette but its so buggy, lack basic functions and so limited that it is imossible to use. They tackled the fact that not a single HVAC, piping manufacturer want to create libearies (and 24-26 old mep was imposible to recreate system for calculating materials and making pressure calulations etc so they started all over) for their tool with default diameters for pipe dimensions which are pretty limited.(for example i use 17,21,26 for drinking water guess what u cant set those in this program only 15,20,25 etc) You cant seperate elemtns from drawn systems so in order to delete 1 single element u have to delete whole thing. You can't draw oval canals for ducting. Drawing sanitary sawage is impossible.  MEP addon stills to this day forgets about your isulation settings. Also from what i saw custom gdl objects for pipe or such causes multiple crashes..

Api Callback c++  for mep functions is very limited as well You pretty much cant change anything just call the existings functions with cordinates and build in dimensions etc.

Also with my 2 years experince of drawing with 24-26 archicad becouse i had to i can say that it was good only for simple projects where u just want to show constructors how your plumbing etc goes through walls etc or show technical rooms for invstors. Other that that it was impossible to create sustainable system for caluclating materials becouse nobody creats working GDL librarys for archicad and everytime u want to use new valves etc u have to model it (usually objects u can download are to heavy for archicad and it gets lagg) then spend hours and hours to properly sets GDL code for it so u can flip it in any XYZ  axis and add some properties so u can calcluate it for materials. If you want to sutain that system in 24-26 you have to employ someone for creating that libraires etc for you and update it constatnly.  GDL gives a lot os possibilites in those 24-26 but its very needy and u have to spend waaay to much times to create something usefull for MEP comittments.

Archicad doesnt care much for MEP users realy. It's architects only program trying to be something more but failing miserably. Also fact that archicad is going for yearly subscription system with price higher than revit is just a joke.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

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@tomswons wrote:

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Archicad doesnt care much for MEP users realy. It's architects only program trying to be something more but failing miserably. Also fact that archicad is going for yearly subscription system with price higher than revit is just a joke.

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I'd suggest it's failing at both miserably these days.

From the architects' side the perception exists that the reason we're getting worse and worse improvements in each new version each year is because they've recently turned their focus to other non-architectural tools try to draw in these new markets (engineering, Mech., Elec, Structural) - but every now and then we run into people in those fields (including like in this thread) who'll tell you that whatever tool they're developing on those sides are pretty terrible and not fit for purpose for what they're intended to do and that they'd never be convinced to switch to Archicad on their basis alone.

So I don't really know what Archicad (or Graphisoft, for that matter) excels in nowadays.

It's always nice to know we've gotten 5 consecutive underwhleming sub-par new version upgrades because they've been spending all this time developing a "buggy, beyond useless, limited" and seemingly all-around crappy MEP tool.

So really, it's great to know they excel and producing tools that don't really work great even if you don't necessarily use them or need them.

I almost thought it was only just us - the architects - that they seem to loathe and have contempt for these days.