ArchiCAD and Revit Evaluation Criteria

[Anonymous]

Greetings,

We're a mid-size architectural firm (50-75 people) located on the East Coast of the US specializing in commercial, educational, higher education, retail, and corporate markets. We've been using AutoCAD and ADT for quite some time now with SketchUp being used almost exclusively for all SD and DD imaging. We've come to the conclusion that these tools have out lived their usefulness.

We've started an evaluation process looking at both ArchiCAD and Revit. Our team (8 people) will be professionally trained by outside consultants so they can competently evaluating both tools.

We need suggestions on what type of information gets included in our evaluation criteria. Has anyone gone through this process with both programs? If so, can you give us any tips or directions on what we should be looking for? What are the current advantages and pitfalls to using either program?

Is ArchiCAD generally better than Revit?

Thanks I advance for any replies. We’ll keep everyone updated on our evaluation process.

mj2

[March_ Bruce]

All my promotional layout work, for example cannot be edited or updated in 10 - it doesn't even import properly so I have to do detective work rather than just opening the pmk & fixing the fills - pmk based layouts moved into 10 are read only or I have to swap back & forth having multiple versions of software with different methodologies & shortcuts all juggled at the same time - I can't even seem to copy & paste text between v9 & v10...

If a client calls 8 years after a phase 1 project there will be 8 versions of migration headaches to reuse the data - BIM is currently a BUST as far as I'm concerned & legacy file access would seem a prerequisite...

Yes we can 'reconstruct' the old menus - how smart is that...?

The 'improved' shortcuts actually add keystrokes to access laptop function keys - again how smart is that...?

[Laura Yanoviak]

Richard wrote:
All those old projects in REVIT are "read-only" - once you've opened them in a current version, you'll be in the current version from then on.

This is what I've recently heard -- any Revit users out there, please correct me if I'm wrong -- we've got structural consultants very hesitant to upgrade to Revit 8, because there's no turning back...

[March_ Bruce]

My most recent promotional material was put together in an hour using scans of hand drawn sketches after wasting an afternoon struggling with old layouts in ArchiCAD 10...

I'm drawing more & more by hand these days - no bugs, simple key shortcuts & line weights, easy layering, no lost or corrupted files, compact, portable & extremely low power consumption <green grin>

Everything old is new again...

[TomWaltz]

The PMKs work flawlessly IF you update them correctly. The important step is that you must open the Layout Book in Plotmaker and change them from PMKs to Project Links.

I've about ~75 projects that I converted from AC9 and PM9 to AC10 and they were about 99% right.

I fought for PMK support quite strongly during the Beta but was quickly won over by how well AC10 could update the old files. Not one of my 25 users was sad to see PMKs go.

[March_ Bruce]

And don't even get me going on the orphaned & duplicate library parts or materials issues...

This very expensive software has multiple Corbusier LC chairs & no chaise lounge since v4.5 or dining table since v65...

Simply improving the library & improving rendering materials along with speed improvements allowing seemless migration of projects & data along the way...

But this is still very much a work in progress...

[March_ Bruce]

"TomWaltz" wrote:
I've about ~75 projects that I converted from AC9 and PM9 to AC10 and they were about 99% right.

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the tip for v9 projects...

I have about 50 projects ranging back to v4.1 that don't convert with 99% accuracy, and I prefer not to spend my weekends & evenings struggling with such non-billable overhead by design - all this time saving technology would seem dubious - as well as trying to manage linking all files from various projects in single promotional file material which would seem a rather daunting prospect...

It is a veritable compatability quicksand when one imagines liability to the ripe old age of 80 with ArchCAD v30+ & 150 or more projects to 'maintain'...

[TomWaltz]

March, wrote:
I have about 50 projects ranging back to v4.1 that don't convert with 99% accuracy, and I prefer not to spend my weekends & evenings struggling with such non-billable overhead by design - all this time saving technology would seem dubious - as well as trying to manage linking all files from various projects in single promotional file material which would seem a rather daunting prospect...

It is a veritable compatibility quicksand when one imagines liability to the ripe old age of 80 with ArchCAD v30+ & 150 or more projects to 'maintain'...

It sounds to me like you didn't change the oil in your car for 8 years and now want to know why there's a problem.

I'd rather not spend my time on file maintenance either. Like it or not, it's a critical part of keeping a computer system running, especially if you want to open old data in the future. Just like storing data on JAZ drives, sooner or later you have to take the time and update everything to something that can be opened by modern systems. I expect many more legacy problems in the future (from any software, not just Archicad).

I don't say any of this to defend Graphisoft, who I do think should be making the tasks easier and who practically does whatever they want with upgrades regardless of the damage to existing projects and users. I say it because I think the problems will grow across the board in all software, and it's worth thinking about now instead of later.

[Anonymous]

Truth is that maintaining old projects is a big deal, and is not an easy process. And it gets even more complicated when software (or the file structure) is complex. You will have a lot of trouble to play VHS in todays systems (I don't even mention Beta systems and so on). If you will not convert you movies library early enough you might be unable to do it at all. Try maybe step by step? First open your project from v4.1 in 6.5 then 9.0 and finally in 10. There will be library conversions, but hey some collateral damages might happen. I was working in the Polish Post and man - conversion from one software to other was horrible, expensive and incredibly difficult (I worked as an IT guy). If you will pull out from old drawer blueprints - don't expect that you can just make copies and sell them again. It might happen that it will be easier to redo a lot from scratch just because Code changes will make it difficult to adopt.
Good luck and ... set, ready, let go .

[March_ Bruce]

When I adopted CAD I truly considered it an experiment of sorts - buildings have been built for thousands of years using traditional medium which still in fact survive today - it has been an interesting ride to date with some remarkable successes & exasperating failures - it is in the end a tool & when the tool starts feeling more like a prison the experiment reaches a conclusion... Being 'better than' another application still may not be good enough.

ArchiCAD may now be merely a tool suitable to larger projects & firms capable of sustaining a dedicated CAD manager - this was certainly not the promise of the early mac-only version 4.1.

The REVIT demo session will be interesting & they may get a resounding 'no thanks' if legacy access is in fact impossible...

One of the promises of CAD software is the easy reuse & adaptation of compiled information - also the foundation of the BIM concept - library parts that I invested much time in now need to be completely reworked & debugged - a time consuming, costly & frustrating activity...

I think I'd rather be skiing on my days off... 🙂

[Anonymous]

Laura wrote:

Richard wrote:
All those old projects in REVIT are "read-only" - once you've opened them in a current version, you'll be in the current version from then on.

This is what I've recently heard -- any Revit users out there, please correct me if I'm wrong -- we've got structural consultants very hesitant to upgrade to Revit 8, because there's no turning back...

That's right, you cannot "save as..." to previous versions of Revit. But I don't understand the hesitation to upgrade. Why would you want to turn back?