ArchiCAD 11

[Anonymous]

ArchiCAD 11 will come soon (as much as I suspect..)
What can AC 11 do better than AC10?

[Karl Ottenstein]

OT: annual release cycle.

The topic of annual releases has been raised various times in this thread as a means of competing with or following in the footsteps of Revit, etc.

My personal take on it is that it is more likely to be related to GS being a listed stock, and having to achieve reasonable investment ratios that analysts as well as investors can be satisified with. Earnings per share are expected to be predictable, and increasing, on an annual, if not quarterly, basis but cannot be so when product releases are in a greater than annual timeframe. Given those earnings, net income is more predictable along with important ratios such as return on equity, return on assets, current ratio, etc. Essential for a public company.

This 'yoke' of being tied to the production of financial figures that fit into the stock market timeframe is why a variety of companies have taken themselves private, removing the pressure to meet quarterly and annual goals.

While GS needs to do annual updates for these and competitive reasons (IMHO), I agree with those of you who suggest that users may skip an update and go to a 2 year cycle...but with the annual updates bringing in new sales/users.

It will be interesting to see what impact it will have on tech support if many existing users do decide to go with every other upgrade, since any bug reported in a prior version will have to be reproduced in the current version to make it into the 'system'. Could increase their workload considerably I imagine, either increasing the costs of tech support or decreasing their responsiveness. And, what user wants to report a bug only to be told "Oh, that was fixed 6 months ago when the current version was released.".

Sorry for being OT, but it's all interesting...

Karl

[Chazz]

The idea of growing the base by throwing the flatlanders some 2D candy is interesting. It is good for us in that it increases the users (ALWAYS GOOD) but has a (small) potential downside in that it increases complexity or maybe reduces some aspect of usability for the those of us already in the club.

I'm not sure if it's an accurate comparison but this sort of Faustian bargain reminds me of the port to Windows back in the dark old days (version 4.5?). Porting AC to Windows was a necessary move (and one that I welcomed) but it meant we we never again got a truly great Mac version. In GS's conception, developing for both platforms means developing for the least common denominator between the two. So no support for all the things that make Macs special. Still, this is better than GS just writing for OSX and the user base being 50% (or less) of what it is today. I guess.

[March_ Bruce]

What's not specific?
Another deaf ear in cyberspace...?

'I found more useful library objects in the free sketchup in 5 minutes than I did in my expensive vertical application - things like dinner table, chaise lounge, cedar shingle material - it was really helpful 'out of the box'... '

'Solid element operations workaround for slab material changes is a preposterous solution acknowledged for several versions...'

'- trim slab to roof & vice versa tool options (asking since v4.12)
- discrete slab & roof edge material changes (asking since v4.12)
- return of legacy NATIVE pmk & 2d layout editing support
- consolidate missing, duplicate or subset library objects
- restore seemingly needless & illogical menu & shortcut changes which actually increased rather than reduced keystrokes (for the growing camp of laptop users) while making legacy version/file use even more complicated & inefficient '

We have 3 Corbusier LC chairs & couches (6) in our main & subset libraries (dining table in 65) all with slightly different names...

yada yada yada

unmentioned (yet) bug - I still can't shift-change a layout window without it collapsing...

The issue of 11 is that they DON'T appear to have fixed some basics like making it easy to cut a whole in a slab for a stair & apply drywall when the extrior of the slab is brick, stucco or if you can make it yourself cedar shingle texture...

Try working for 4 months in emulation always being promised 'soon' for a non-beta working copy, having bought a $3000 workstation on the promise of improved efficiency & software delivery... How is this Apple's fault?

The online promoters of this software may be the biggest issue with improving it - giving Graphisoft licence to ignore the inconvenient truth...

It would be nice if they would fix v10 - the one we all paid for...?

[Anonymous]

The concept of enticing the "flatcadders" with 2D candy is fine as far as it goes but what happens when GS has implemented all the 2D enticements it can? What is the next step? Shouldn't the growth of AC be built on the foundation that it is simply a better app than anything else that is out there?

Enticing flatcadders with 2D "stuff" is a short term tactic but not a long term strategy. What is the next big plan to expand the user base.....Blackberry ArchiCAD? A decoder ring and a secret handshake? ArchiCAD Lite? All the functionality of a pencil and paper without the headaches of that darn third dimension.

Gary Bley
Portland, Oregon USA

[March_ Bruce]

I like your last suggestion - unite sketchup & archicad - get some apple interface engineers working on making this software intuitive & elegant again - get the object, material & fill libraries to kick-ass status including many supplier library objects 'out of the box' - fix as many basic issues as possible & make it easy & effortless to use, as well as offering full legacy compatibility including similar menus & tool features so we can work effortlessly without menu & shortcut dyslexia (command 2 & 3 seemed perfect for 2d & 3d) - get things right the first time rather than in haste & by trial & error eg. I think they finally resolved the most primary, basic feature of the pen/lineweight tool - wysiwyg with commentary - it only took 10 versions!

[Aaron Bourgoin]

what is a bugmeister?

[Karl Ottenstein]

March, wrote:
What's not specific?
Another deaf ear in cyberspace...?

Ummm... you were complaining about the MacIntel implementation. Your list doesn't seem to have anything to do with that platform.

Karl

[TomWaltz]

gbley wrote:
The concept of enticing the "flatcadders" with 2D candy is fine as far as it goes but what happens when GS has implemented all the 2D enticements it can? What is the next step? Shouldn't the growth of AC be built on the foundation that it is simply a better app than anything else that is out there?

Not according to Bruce. He seems to want to go back to manually editing 2D PMKs like it's 1998.

[TomWaltz]

gbley wrote:
ArchiCAD Lite?

They already tried that. Remember Archicad Start Edition?

All the functionality of a pencil and paper without the headaches of that darn third dimension.

What do you think the Worksheet Tool is?

[March_ Bruce]

I am suggesting a long wishlist on both platform functionality & interface/feature design...

This includes it would seem whether the upgrade is timely, efficacious, of value, credible, functional - this includes the track record for previous upgrade(s), functionality, non-performance as well as features missing, flaws never fixed, bugs never fixed, featuritis at the expense of basics, poor organization & anything related to past present & future operability...

If you work on a peecee then chances are things went well technically with your upgrade however many of the 'basic' design features I speak of also affect the peecee version - I couldn't even get my key upgraded without a peecee running ie - Apple was only shipping Intel Macs when 10 'shipped' - ArchiCAD didn't work until 9 months after the Intel macs were introduced - I hardly call that good platform support for an upgrade...