ArchiCAD 18 announced

[Laszlo Nagy]

Find the official announcement and new features at:

http://www.graphisoft.com/archicad/archicad-18/overview/

[stefan]

From my experience, many of the C4D Shaders are bitmap-based. Some are procedural. If ArchiCAD supports whatever C4D has, fine, but I'm pretty sure that there will be reasons to still have a C4D license.

I guess visualisation entourage is best placed in a new, empty file, with the model as a hotlink module, to keep the scene from cluttering.

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Stairmaker... well. It will come eventually. Maybe they leave it in, to have at least some reason-to-exist for Cigraph and Cadimage and the likes.

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Renovation filter but no phasing? > this could be extended with custom tags (= allowing any given tag to any object) and tag-based filtering. One solution (for which every technical implementation seems already in-place in current ArchiCAD) that can be used for renovation projects, phased projects, historical research, LOD tagging, project planning, false-color visualisation (e.g. display structural load-bearing elements in blue, non-loadbearing in green etc...).

It will be complex to set up but provide endless flexibility. Do it before Autodesk does and patents the concept.

[MSotero]

The improvements appear to be very welcome!

While the rendering engine seems nice and the videos are helpful, the seemingly complex (scientific) nature of figuring out great rendering settings for materials still seems tedious. It might be helpful if Graphisoft posts settings for various materials over time as a starting point for users and/or continues developing helpful videos about it.

The youtube videos of the revision manager seem to show a fairly extensive implementation. It will be interesting to see if it can really do everything desired.

After viewing the revision manager videos, it brings to mind something far more important to me. Namely, a proper Keynote system at the same level of thought and integration as the revision manager. Given that Keynotes are needed for every drawing, its priority seems self evident for me.

Anyhow, AC18 seems like a step forward. Will be nice to put it to work.

[Graphisoft Connect]

Dan wrote:
And why still no update to the Renovation Tool so you can set the renovation status of individual skins in composites - currently there is no (easy) way to add say a new external insulation layer to an existing wall, which is a pretty common requirement now for retrofit / refurb. works.

Would this help?
youtu.be/5_SgGNG7f8I

[kevin b]

Can you add multiple accessories to the same wall? For instance, one placed with Demo renovation filter and one placed with New, so that you could show stripping off of old material and adding new.

[Jussi_]

I read that WIBU dongles need to be changed, since AC18 does not support it any more. New dongle does not support older than AC10 versions. This is really bad to us who have used ArchiCAD since 3.1.
Buildings have a long lifespan. Those designed with very old ArchiCAD versions need renovations now or in few years. Big projects can handle tedious conversion fixes. Conversions do not work flawlessly.
Usually customers need tiny fixes to their old buildings, work that can be done in an hour or two if old ArchiCAD version is used. To convert to AC 18 and fix all that has changed can take hours. Before the work that you get paid can be started.

My point is that old users need to access to old ArchiCAD documents with ArchiCAD they were created. Without conversion hassle (and numerous errors). This should be paying customers choice. Keep those obsolete machines, operating systems and software versions.

To me is much easier to skip new ArchiCAD versions than give up access to old ones.

I would like to hear Graphisoft solution to this.
And I have converted old documents with tools we now have. I am expert on this matter. It is tedious and pointless, if job can be done in old version without errors immediately. If you take tedious conversion method, errors are found during the whole project lifespan.
And in some cases conversion is the right way to proceed - but your customers do know which one is right to them! According to project they have in hand.

[Rick Thompson]

Jussi_ wrote:
I read that WIBU dongles need to be changed, since AC18 does not support it any more. .

Not sure where you read that, but my old blue wibu dongle works fine with 18 beta, and there was no mention of an issue after release, that I have heard. Most of the files I still use, daily, were started in the 90's, and I never have issues other than library parts. That that was help a lot with the migration libraries and auto conversion. Changing over from Plotmaker was the biggest hassle, but obviously worth it.

[Graphisoft Connect]

kevin wrote:
Can you add multiple accessories to the same wall? For instance, one placed with Demo renovation filter and one placed with New, so that you could show stripping off of old material and adding new.

Unfortunately not - a wall can only hold one accessory.

We can update the Ac18 version of the object to display differently on different renovation filters, but a particular status would need to be applied to the overall accessory object.

[Chazz]

AC 18: Not interested. Disappointed in the direction of the development since 16 (love the morph tool and the ability to import skp files). The idea of such sophisticated rendering capability running natively in the tool is absurd. Proof of this is in the rendering demos which are horrendous admissions of failure. You could spend the rest of your life just fiddling aimlessly with the endless settings to get a good concrete texture. Is that an improvement? Simplifying the long neglected (and equally obtuse) Sketch Renderer would have been more welcome. But with very rare exception GS does not iterate and perfect features once they are released. Photo-realism is why they invented consultants.

I know you didn't ask (and are probably no longer reading anyway) but do you know what I want? My number one needed feature? As someone who does less and less pure architecture and more "branded environments" and trade show booths, what I need is materials and mapped images to show up in elevations, sections and 3D documents .

Wouldn't that be helpful?

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. I feel much better now.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Chazz wrote:
Photo-realism is why they invented consultants.

Although some consultants are a bit sketchy. 😉

[Stress Co_]

Chazz wrote:
Proof of this is in the rendering demos which are horrendous admissions of failure. You could spend the rest of your life just fiddling aimlessly with the endless settings to get a good concrete texture.

My take-a-way from watching that video... "Ok, now we're completely lost".