Archicad 14 New Features

[Dennis Lee]

See what's on youtube!

http://www.youtube.com/user/Archicad#g/c/5C1926DD91A70C7B

Personally, not much in it for me at all!

[Bricklyne Clarence]

mikem wrote:
Some of you need to look at the bigger picture. Graphisoft have put in place the foundations that are necessary to take Archicad to the next level and ensure that it remains a viable option in the future. The significance of that should not be undervalued and I think Graphisoft should be applauded for having the guts to do it.

Having done that I would now expect that they will go back to improving those aspects that users are asking for which are important. That is the point really. Development effort needs to go in to where it will make a significant difference. Fixing something that is minor or a problem for just a few is not the best use of development resources.

...."the best use of development resources"???

You mean like on dimension prefixes and suffices, or a clunky Curtain Wall tool that wasn't exactly well thought out in its implementation or in the area of its logical intuitiveness and a fluid workflow nor even complete for that matter? Or would that be on a buggy Teamwork 2.0 (or will that be TW2.1 in ArchiCAD 14?) or OpenGL shadows?

So in your opinion an improvement of the Stair Tool, for designing Stairs - which exist in virtually every single building designed by architects, - and which users have been clamoring for an improvement on since ArchiCAD 7, is in your opinion, a "minor" concern and or as you put it "a problem for just a few" and not the best use of development resources?
Or perhaps the improvement or development of a better methodology for the design and creation of custom parametric GDL objects that does not involve coding and scripting GDL code; this is a minor concern in your opinion and something that only a few people would benefit from? Really?

Seriously?

Surely you're joking.

The whole "Limited development resources" argument and defense is a bit thin and really something of a joke at this point, given how they've chosen to spend the last couple of releases (and yes I know that the actual development cycle for features in ArchiCAD is really 2-3 years and not the yearly cycle which forces them to release half-baked new features) on new "game-changing" tools that haven't even been implemented that well or completed in some cases.

Like I've said before in the past, and like I will always say whenever this ludicrous argument comes up, nobody forces GS to go on a yearly upgrade cycle if it seems they are unable to cope with it from the perspective of limited resources and meeting users expectations. So the fact that they would be seemingly struggling with that cycle - one of their own choosing - or that they seem to lack the resources to put out a decent upgrade on both sides of the aisle - Mac and PC - is not something they should really complain about, nor be cut any slack for.

[Rafal SLEK]

NeckoFromSarajevo wrote:

You will have chance to see REVIT in action cos my plan is to post it here on this forum. You will be able to see REVIT in action comparing to ARCHICAD. I will try to draw some roofs, profiles, free form object, stairs, walls, print, workflow and speed.
...

Great! Please start working in Revit with Layers, RoofMaker and maybe check where is something like Trace&Reference there.
Of course you could check meantime how Wishlist on Augi forum is working.

[Anonymous]

Rafal wrote:
Great! Please start working in Revit with Layers, RoofMaker and maybe check where is something like Trace&Reference there.
Of course you could check meantime how Wishlist on Augi forum is working.

You mean its working here! LOL. Don't make fool of yourself trying to defend the undefendable!

[Anonymous]

According to some of the previous posts, GS is working on foundational level overhauls to set AC up for the future. The oft quoted example of this is TW2 and the overhauled underlying database. I guess another might be stripping out old code and making it 64bit (btw did you read the rumour of 128bit for Win8?! 😉). Important steps to be sure, but if each step takes 2-3 years to roll out, feature parity with the competition is impossible, and explains the increasing despondency in the AC faithful.

The thing is there are major other 'foundation-level-items' screaming out for work - the whole underlying 3D engine for example. Attend to that and just maybe we can unlock the whole graphical editing of library parts, assign relationships between elements etc.
What about overhauling materials in AC? Then perhaps the latest Lightworks rendering engine can be incorporated, instead of the insufferable crippled version we have to endure (or ignore - those who have shelled out more $$s for Artlantis etc).

And in the meantime there is enough other 'modular' stuff that could be acquired and incorporated, for example:
Stairbuilder - instantly give all users a decent stair tool.
Revision Manager - at version 14 we still have no inbuilt workflow for managing revisions!
I could go on...but then it doesn't take much imagination to see the potential in this approach. Sadly such lateral thinking is obviously not palatable at GS HQ.

[KeesW]

I too am underwhelmed. The focus should surely be on making things that almost work work properly, giving us decent stairs, etc etc. I guess new developments are more exciting than maintenance. However, lets not be too despondent until we get to try the real thing.

[owen]

Rafal wrote:
Of course you could check meantime how Wishlist on Augi forum is working.

Well at least it is lightyears ahead of the one we have. There is a system, people vote, results are published and Autodesk can be held to account when an organized wishlist is not addressed. But many items on it do get addressed.

I think part of the reason Graphisoft does not implement a more organized wishlist system is they do not want such a public means of being held to account. All their customer relations occur behind closed doors on a per-office basis (if you are an important enough client, little guys can STFU).

That said .. TW2 was THE most significant feature released in a very long time. Unless you have gone through the pain of using TW1 in a large team environment I guess you would not understand how much of a productivity improvement TW2 is.

And it was not asked for .. yes we were complaining about TW1 network performance issues, but we we not expecting the complete overhaul we got in TW2. They did some major restructuring of the ArchiCAD database system which will bring dividends in future releases. Unfortunately nothing to show for AC14 but I am positive we will in 15 (i might be outta here too if not).

It is not just the big firms that this has helped. As part of a course i'm tutoring at Uni we have groups of students representing various disciplines collaborating on projects hosted on a TW2 server outside the Uni. One student was on holidays on a small island off the coast of Wales and was able to log into the Australian BIM server and work in the project using a 3G wireless card. This was simply impossible with TW1 .. we could not even do this within the same city over business connections.

I think it is very important for Graphisoft to be thinking about big picture things like they did with TW2 - things we do not even think to ask for because we are so caught up with current problems - like why Stairmaker sucks so hard, or why SEO's are not shown in plan. But there is a balance with addressing these existing issues that needs to be struck ... something I do not think they are doing very well at the moment.

Anyway .. I am not defending Graphisoft for the lack of new features in AC14 - I think it is extremely unfortunate and they will no doubt lose some customers due to this. Certainly many people will go off subscription. But I don't underestimate the amount of work involved in the last few years to enable features such as TW2 and essentially rewrite large portions of the application for OSX 64bit (which BTW we will see for AC15 - see note in Tech Reqs for AC14).

[Anonymous]

owen wrote:
i might be outta here too if not).

me too.

[gpowless]

Really. No one should be fooled by an "upgrade".

Graphisoft is in the business of making money. They are not in the business of making software that will dazzle the world of architecture, nor are they in the business of giving people what they want. Rather, upgrades are ways of generating both investment income and sales revenue. To maximize profit, they must be careful not to upgrade too much or too little, and their marketing department must be able to sell what they change - even if the change is for the worse.

Archicad is a tool. We could buy really cheap tools and hope that they will do the same thing as very expensive ones. We could also buy swamp land in the hopes that it would make a very good building site.

There are really only two comparable, competing products out there. There is a PC and there is a Mac. Archicad is really the latter, not mainstream and while it will do everything and then some that the PC will do, in the end Revit has the market share because, they are Autocad. Plain, vanilla Autocad in a 3d BIM package. They have the resources to market it as the only BIM package and you can bet that most of the vanilla Autocad users they will get to upgrade to Revit will never have known they even had a competitor.

So in my mind Graphisoft has made the right choice for their investors and for themselves. To hell with the users, we are expendable. To hell with practical and useful changes to their (our) software. They don't want the investors to think they are sometimes vanilla too.

Graphisoft will continue to search out the useless "wow!" factor for every new upgrade. Otherwise they would no longer be able to get enough money to maintain their staff and their company headquarters. We are just collateral damage.

[Anonymous]

Nekko,
I have no need of your demonstrations, we have one Revit Suite 2010 in our office, that now 5 years that we carefully track the + and - of both software. If we did not switch, it is for objective reasons. We are professional end users and I am the one who monitors the latest information on the software.

[Anonymous]

I give up.