Archicad 10 is announced

[Greg Kmethy]

Dear Talkers,

You can read Graphisoft's announcement on Archicad 10 here:
http://www.graphisoft.com/products/archicad/ac10/

[David Pacifico]

Dwight wrote:


The harsh reality of free-form design, unless it is that bogus ferro-concrete stuff, is that those beautiful, flowing curves we all dream of creating have harsh underpinnings that turn out to be A BUNCH OF NASTY, IRRATIONAL OBJECTS!!!

Some free form designs done long before CAD by some local Architects. Lots of wall sections and x,y,z coordinates.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

David wrote:

Some free form designs done long before CAD by some local Architects. Lots of wall sections and x,y,z coordinates.

Which ironically is supposed to be some of the redundancy that should be eliminated or reduced by the philosophy of Parametric design and BIM which ArchiCAD is SUPPOSED to be an industry leader ( or at the very least, visionary pioneer) in, at least in pure AEC.

It's also part of the genius of Gehry's designs, in that although his designs, required a large number of sections and details to ensure accuracy and design integrity, his chosen method ( a hybrid NURBS/Parametric methodology combining Rhino, CATIA and AutoCAD) considerably reduced the donkeywork on the documentation end, while not inhibiting the design end and simultaneously ensuring accuracy,keeping costs and the overall project budget down within reason, onthe financial end. Now, no one's asking ArchiCAD to do this kind of design, but the expectation was always that it would be able to mature in tandem with modern technology - construction technology - to reduce the ineffeciency of having to resort to multiple redundant work-arounds and methods to achieve what ought to be automatic processes at this point (creating complex geometry and automatically generating the required sections, details and documentation for the said geometry, which would otherwise be rather difficult to do with flatland CAD) in the program.

But as we can see, GS doesn't seem to believe that we are capable of harnessing such technology and methodologies if they were to be available and particularly considering the fact that the contruction industry has a lot of the necessary technology in place, if need be, for architects and designers to exploit.

[Aaron Bourgoin]

The Steel Detailers who produce fabrication drawings for the structural components on many of Gehry's projects are based in Canada and use Tekla (not CATIA) for the steel detailing.

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

Bricklyne wrote:
Gehry's designs… required a large number of sections and details to ensure accuracy and design integrity, his chosen method ( a hybrid NURBS/Parametric methodology combining Rhino, CATIA and AutoCAD)

ArchiCAD and Revit allow you to generate floor plans, sections, isometrics and perspectives, schedules, from a single database, on a single program. Nothing to do with CATIA and Rhino, which Gehry's guys might need to even figure out his titanium cow-pies before moving them to AutoCAD.

ArchiCAD 10 is an amazing upgrade, I think closer to the ideal for 99.995% of architectural practice than anything else out there by a long distance. If your work falls in the other .005% then you will also profit from Rhino and CATIA. But that is a different program category.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

Aaron wrote:
The Steel Detailers who produce fabrication drawings for the structural components on many of Gehry's projects are based in Canada and use Tekla (not CATIA) for the steel detailing.

Yes, but they obtain the point cloud coordinates for the various section joints and details directly from Gehry's CATIA-managed models. Gehry doesn't require the various parts fabricators and manufacturers to use CATIA, but have to have systems that allow accurate paperless transfer of the necessary data for the various required parts, whether it be through IGES, STL or any of the other Industry formats that CATIA can translate to.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

Ignacio wrote:

ArchiCAD 10 is an amazing upgrade, I think closer to the ideal for 99.995% of architectural practice than anything else out there by a long distance. If your work falls in the other .005% then you will also profit from Rhino and CATIA. But that is a different program category.

Ignacio, I agree with you whole-heartedly and in principle, and one of the reasons why I and others might seem to be complaining quite a bit, has a lot to do with the fact that we have come to greatly appreciate and heavily rely on ArchiCAD for a lot of our daily work thanks to its amazing abilities, so much so, that it becomes disappointing to have to seek solutions elsewhere for what logically should be possible to do from within the program itself.

Again, I think the whole Frank Gehry angle is just clouding matters despite the fact that there is a small overlap between what we were discussing ( the shortcomings of the Profiler add-on and the new Profile Manager and Gehry's CATIA/NURBS methodology). I already pointed out in another post that one does not have to be doing sleek curvilinear designs like Gehry's to require a fully and well-functioning Profile tool in ArchiCAD; it affects a lot of common day-to-day design tasks and this is supported by the fact that requests to improve it have been on the Wishlist since almost 2 versions ago.

Work-arounds are fine, but wouldn't it be nice to look forward to the day when we can design everything we need from within ArchiCAD without have to import or detour through a Maxonform-like plugin, such that the generated geometry "speaks" the same Parametric language like the rest of the design elements (walls, slabs, beams etc) instead of just being static library objects?

Again, I have to point out that I appreciate a lot of the improvements that they've made to the program; I imagine a lot of them will greatly expand my creative capacity. I just fear that GS are inviting a situation in which other program developers ( as in competitors) will gladly step in to fill in the void and the gaps that the seem reluctant to address.

[fhedberg]

I've had a look through the more detailed pdf doc (below) on ArchiCAD 10's new features and I can't find anything regarding back referencing on detail markers or sections.....does anyone know if this has been implemented in the new version????

http://www.designintegrations.com/files/ArchiCAD10/newfeatures10.pdf

[__archiben]

David wrote:
I know some of the useability stuff will touch every user. The simple fact that you won't have to type Shift-R every time you draw something...

a completely misguided functionality call in my opinion david. how much time will you waste not typing 'r' and finding that you've just entered an x coordinate value?

... or the fact you will get a reference line that your curser can detect that will allow you to draw with one hand is nice.

half the hands, twice the time. it's good stuff for people just learning archicad, but the ability to work "with one hand" is not going to have any affect on experienced users in the slightest.

Bricklyne wrote:
Does this mean that it (the Profiler add-on) still draws profiles curved in plan as a series of segmented straight sections, or have they improved it to actualy draw curves, as one wants?

they are faceted sections. actual curves? what do you think this is, christmas?

~/archiben

[Djordje]

Petros wrote:
A very simple question for the one's that tested 10:
You have a semi-circular wall in your plan and you want to add a cornice to that wall, which steps do you follow with 10?

Same as 9. All the standard addons are still there, and then some.

[Djordje]

~/archiben wrote:

David wrote:
I know some of the useability stuff will touch every user. The simple fact that you won't have to type Shift-R every time you draw something...

a completely misguided functionality call in my opinion david. how much time will you waste not typing 'r' and finding that you've just entered an x coordinate value?

Yep, driving with one hand is also a good thing, otherwise Starbucks will go belly up. You can also steer with your foot as you need the other hand for the mobile. Usual stuff around here, at minimum 120kph.

No, David, on this point I strongly disagree with the marketing pitch. Wat are you going to do in your training - never mention direct coordinate input?

I prefer elegance and simplicity to InYourFace popups and guidlines. Old timer blinkers? May be ...