Ok... Nice joke. Or its not a joke? 
So paid for 13, got empty hand. Paid for 14 and get nothing again.
Ok i got it. You dont want us (single office users anymore).
This is over. I made a mistake and believed in Archicad. Paid it, and paid again and again... and was stupid enough to think.. hey this cannot be, next version they will do something usefull. But no, i keep paying, so i am an idiot and it does not matter what they deliver.
Ok this is enought. Archicad is over. They cannot be serious that a modeling program has 3 times in a row NO NEW MODELING FEATURES
And as always, no official report on when (if ever) we will see any improvements in modelling.
That is enough.
So paid for 13, got empty hand. Paid for 14 and get nothing again.
Ok i got it. You dont want us (single office users anymore).
This is over. I made a mistake and believed in Archicad. Paid it, and paid again and again... and was stupid enough to think.. hey this cannot be, next version they will do something usefull. But no, i keep paying, so i am an idiot and it does not matter what they deliver.
Ok this is enought. Archicad is over. They cannot be serious that a modeling program has 3 times in a row NO NEW MODELING FEATURES
And as always, no official report on when (if ever) we will see any improvements in modelling.
That is enough.
oreopoulos wrote:Well 2 times .. AC12 made promises of things to come in the form of the rather clunky, unfinished but powerful Curtain Wall Tool. Unfortunately it - like so many promises before - has languished sinced its release.
They cannot be serious that a modeling program has 3 times in a row NO NEW MODELING FEATURES
Maybe AC15 will bring us all these new 'Systems Tools' they talked about
But the sentiment is right - putting CW aside there has been almost zero progress on the modelling front for 3 versions. Unlike the competition which has developed concept massing tools which can be leveraged as frameworks for complex building systems. Hopefully GS responds to this area of the program in the next version, 5 years will be too long for many (indeed as is 4 already)
Bricklyne wrote:Are you saying that the ruler tool in AC13 wasn't a modelling boost?!!
But then again I also remember shortly before the death of MaxonForm when one of the developers themselves on this forums actually said that they were planning on replacing it with more robust modelling tools more native to ArchiCAD itself.
That was back in ArchiCAD 10.
4 versions ago.
And still nothing, yet MaxonForm is as dead as the Dodo bird.
long post....
I waited some time to post, just until AC14 was released or announced, to see what new features came out with it; and now it was time.
I've used AC since V6, in every kind and size of project; and with its evolution, my knowledge of the software has also increased.
I have also used Revit Architecture, not as much as AC, but enough to give a valuable opinion/comparison between them; and as others have stated, AC is superior, but now just barely.
The MAIN reason -of course, there are others which I'll try to mention- I have not migrated fully to Revit is because of the AC work paradigm. What do I mean?
For starters, let me say that I consider AC to be about 5 years behind Revit in terms of general and parametric modeling, and I guess we all know that. The easy (although far from complete) modeling tools in Revit and parametric constrains and creation environment make it so easy to create/extend your object library, and the fact that they kind of work like blocks that get saved with the project is a real lifesaver. Maybe that's why AC brought the refined library management in AC13, sort of their own in-place families. Revit modeling and libraries (families, as they are called) are evolving. An example of this would be the change in a lot of libraries that now sport an "instance parameter" structure, which means that each library part may have different settings in its parameters, and still can be scheduled easily. Some time ago, most library parts came with "type parameter" settings, like the old AC libraries worked. There's an advantage to this: if you now you're going to use the same window all over the place, you use a "type parameter", and really use the same window (settings and all) in the project. AC lacks real cloning of elements.
But (and it is a BIG BUT) on the other hand, AC is about 5 years AHEAD of Revit in the model-work-documentation paradigm. The way model->layers.combos/views->layouts->publish work is in my opinion THE way BIM should work. Let me bring up some light onto this. Revit says it doesn't use layers. Well... it doesn't... it uses categories. SAME DIFFERENCE. In fact, I find these categories restrictive; and although they do help you to keep your model organized (unless you create a toilet using a door template and it gets categorized as a door, which I don't see happening), its not easy to, for example, have different dimension "categories", say one for general dimensions, or other for detail dimensions. Layers/layers combos are a better approach to these documentation problems, and when used in combination with the cloned VIEWS, it's just unbeatable.
Now... there is no real difference in Revit between the model and views (or project map and view map). You just have your model database (which is why most things in Revit get generated on the fly) and then you create views from it. But then, plans are also a view, and so are sections and elevations, even schedules!!!; and while this might help the parametric engine, it just makes a mess when it comes to multiple views because in Revit you can only place a view on a sheet (layout) one time. You want it somewhere else? Duplicate it/clone it to get it; and take caution if you want some annotations in your duplicated view, as dimensions and annotations live in viewsANDcategories (yes, together, because if you delete an already annotated view, you loose your dimensions; while in AC your data is data on the model, and its visibility is controlled by layers, if you delete a certain view from the view map, you don't delete the data, just the combination of layers and scale that form the view itself). And your "project map" which is the same as your "view map" starts to grow as views are needed. Suppose you need the same plan on different scales and layout sizes: in Revit, your project/view map would be big, just to do this. In AC, you have ONE project map, where all model and marker elements live, and then in the view map you combine your layers to generate as many views as you need/want, and place them anywhere you want, as many times as you want. Yes... the title references need to be checked, I'll give you that, but I prefer to select in sections/elevations which view it marker should point to, than to have the same section/elevation repeated in my model map several times just because I need different scale/categories/etc combinations.
This flexibility in the documentation is what makes AC better than Revit (for instance, Revit can't place dimensions on 3d views, like in 3d documents in AC)...... but....... should Autodesk ever implement the same model.map->view.map->sheet.map->publish paradigm into Revit, it would just beat AC hands down. And sadly... it will, now that we know the "new" features of AC14. It's really a shame. GS may be preparing a major release for AC15, all right... but there goes another year that the competition will gain in terms of user input, and I may say, a year that many will use to learn other platforms (not exclusively Revit), like I'm currently doing extending my knowledge of Revit, preparing to switch over.
There are other things that make AC and Revit alike and different at the same time. Two tools as example: slabs and roofs, specifically editing and slopes for each. When using slabs, in Revit you enter a drafting mode where you define the edges of your polygon, and then the model is generated based on this polygon. If you need to edit it, you have to enter the sketch mode to do it. In AC, you edit the polygon and model at the same time, and is a real time saver. And the tools you have on the pet palette are just great (although I would prefer a pie menu, a la maya, instead of a pet palette). But then along comes Revit with the split surface functionality: you have one and only one slab, but any polygon can be split and assigned different materials. In AC you either use two slabs, or one for the general bottom and thinner ones to define upper splits. With roofs is almost the same thing, but in AC is hard to get slopes right (even with the adjust angle option in the pet palette). In Revit you can define an arrow (yes... a simple arrow) to set start and end point of slope, and set start and top levels based on that arrow! Come on!
But still... I like better the way you work with AC creation and editing tools (virtual trace is heaven!!!). They are much faster than Revit's, but that competition get's leveled with Revit's parametric engine. In Revit it's slower to make edits, but get carried through out the model and documents faster; in AC is the other way around.
If GS wants to improve AC, in my opinion they should look into:
1. Database parametric engine: In Revit, you really have live views of a single database. If you have several views open and select a door in one of them, it gets selected in other views, and changes are realtime. In AC, you may have a plan view and a section view opem, but they are not live and connected, and get updated only after you click on the other view. Even worse: AC bases almost everything on the floor plan, so while in Revit you click in a section view and the software responds like "the user selected a door", AC works like "the user has clicked a point in a section view, in the coordinate x=2 y=1.8, which based on the floor plan and elevation data, corresponds to an area enclosed by a door, so, the user has clicked on a door: select it".
2. Remove the 80's thinking about software: if sketchup and revit can make components and families without programming knowledge, why AC can't do it?
3. Improve the model->view->layout->publish work model. It is a great strength of the software: take advantage of it.
4. GUI. AC has a GUI that you HAVE to learn. Once you get it, you get it; but if you analize it... well... you'll see it lacks a lot. The features about the work environment are awesome. Export and import workspaces, and set them with a few clicks is FANTASTIC!. But the rest of the GUI is just confusing, in the sense that it lacks consistency. I mean, open up and compare the settings window for walls, doors, columns, slabs, zones, dimensions, levels, text, lines, grids, etc... and you'll see. Yes... there are some elements of consistency, but in general you have to dig into every window to know where a parameter is. Revit's GUI is not that good either, but the simplistic manner in which it shows properties (like a spreadsheet), makes it easy to learn, instead of learning a different window for each tool. You know what I mean.
5. Listen to the userbase/clients. You may come up with ideas to implement on the software, based on technology and new standards. That just gets you halfway. The userbase/clients is where the software gets tested and used in real life situations. That's the other half that's missing. Autodesk already learned this lesson. Just look at the complete transformation they're doing with 3ds max.
All this of course sounds like ArchiCAD Utopia. It is. I know it would require great effort and maybe a complete rewrite of the software. My guess is that it won't happen. And looking at AC14 "new" features... well....
Not all is lost. There are some things that can be improved right now, like removing the redundant updating of drawings (if you have the same section view in several layouts and gets updated, it will update every time you open one of those layouts: so update the view once, on the viewmap level, and make the update on layouts instant); or small improvements like better editing paradigm than a pet palette or adding a typing search filter to... everything (like how about hit ctrl-L and start typing to filter some layers that have "arch" on it?, because the current filtering is kind of useless)
One thing is certain: people using AC are starting to really look into Revit as a better option for BIM. I guess.... its time to go with the flow.........
best regards.
I waited some time to post, just until AC14 was released or announced, to see what new features came out with it; and now it was time.
I've used AC since V6, in every kind and size of project; and with its evolution, my knowledge of the software has also increased.
I have also used Revit Architecture, not as much as AC, but enough to give a valuable opinion/comparison between them; and as others have stated, AC is superior, but now just barely.
The MAIN reason -of course, there are others which I'll try to mention- I have not migrated fully to Revit is because of the AC work paradigm. What do I mean?
For starters, let me say that I consider AC to be about 5 years behind Revit in terms of general and parametric modeling, and I guess we all know that. The easy (although far from complete) modeling tools in Revit and parametric constrains and creation environment make it so easy to create/extend your object library, and the fact that they kind of work like blocks that get saved with the project is a real lifesaver. Maybe that's why AC brought the refined library management in AC13, sort of their own in-place families. Revit modeling and libraries (families, as they are called) are evolving. An example of this would be the change in a lot of libraries that now sport an "instance parameter" structure, which means that each library part may have different settings in its parameters, and still can be scheduled easily. Some time ago, most library parts came with "type parameter" settings, like the old AC libraries worked. There's an advantage to this: if you now you're going to use the same window all over the place, you use a "type parameter", and really use the same window (settings and all) in the project. AC lacks real cloning of elements.
But (and it is a BIG BUT) on the other hand, AC is about 5 years AHEAD of Revit in the model-work-documentation paradigm. The way model->layers.combos/views->layouts->publish work is in my opinion THE way BIM should work. Let me bring up some light onto this. Revit says it doesn't use layers. Well... it doesn't... it uses categories. SAME DIFFERENCE. In fact, I find these categories restrictive; and although they do help you to keep your model organized (unless you create a toilet using a door template and it gets categorized as a door, which I don't see happening), its not easy to, for example, have different dimension "categories", say one for general dimensions, or other for detail dimensions. Layers/layers combos are a better approach to these documentation problems, and when used in combination with the cloned VIEWS, it's just unbeatable.
Now... there is no real difference in Revit between the model and views (or project map and view map). You just have your model database (which is why most things in Revit get generated on the fly) and then you create views from it. But then, plans are also a view, and so are sections and elevations, even schedules!!!; and while this might help the parametric engine, it just makes a mess when it comes to multiple views because in Revit you can only place a view on a sheet (layout) one time. You want it somewhere else? Duplicate it/clone it to get it; and take caution if you want some annotations in your duplicated view, as dimensions and annotations live in viewsANDcategories (yes, together, because if you delete an already annotated view, you loose your dimensions; while in AC your data is data on the model, and its visibility is controlled by layers, if you delete a certain view from the view map, you don't delete the data, just the combination of layers and scale that form the view itself). And your "project map" which is the same as your "view map" starts to grow as views are needed. Suppose you need the same plan on different scales and layout sizes: in Revit, your project/view map would be big, just to do this. In AC, you have ONE project map, where all model and marker elements live, and then in the view map you combine your layers to generate as many views as you need/want, and place them anywhere you want, as many times as you want. Yes... the title references need to be checked, I'll give you that, but I prefer to select in sections/elevations which view it marker should point to, than to have the same section/elevation repeated in my model map several times just because I need different scale/categories/etc combinations.
This flexibility in the documentation is what makes AC better than Revit (for instance, Revit can't place dimensions on 3d views, like in 3d documents in AC)...... but....... should Autodesk ever implement the same model.map->view.map->sheet.map->publish paradigm into Revit, it would just beat AC hands down. And sadly... it will, now that we know the "new" features of AC14. It's really a shame. GS may be preparing a major release for AC15, all right... but there goes another year that the competition will gain in terms of user input, and I may say, a year that many will use to learn other platforms (not exclusively Revit), like I'm currently doing extending my knowledge of Revit, preparing to switch over.
There are other things that make AC and Revit alike and different at the same time. Two tools as example: slabs and roofs, specifically editing and slopes for each. When using slabs, in Revit you enter a drafting mode where you define the edges of your polygon, and then the model is generated based on this polygon. If you need to edit it, you have to enter the sketch mode to do it. In AC, you edit the polygon and model at the same time, and is a real time saver. And the tools you have on the pet palette are just great (although I would prefer a pie menu, a la maya, instead of a pet palette). But then along comes Revit with the split surface functionality: you have one and only one slab, but any polygon can be split and assigned different materials. In AC you either use two slabs, or one for the general bottom and thinner ones to define upper splits. With roofs is almost the same thing, but in AC is hard to get slopes right (even with the adjust angle option in the pet palette). In Revit you can define an arrow (yes... a simple arrow) to set start and end point of slope, and set start and top levels based on that arrow! Come on!
But still... I like better the way you work with AC creation and editing tools (virtual trace is heaven!!!). They are much faster than Revit's, but that competition get's leveled with Revit's parametric engine. In Revit it's slower to make edits, but get carried through out the model and documents faster; in AC is the other way around.
If GS wants to improve AC, in my opinion they should look into:
1. Database parametric engine: In Revit, you really have live views of a single database. If you have several views open and select a door in one of them, it gets selected in other views, and changes are realtime. In AC, you may have a plan view and a section view opem, but they are not live and connected, and get updated only after you click on the other view. Even worse: AC bases almost everything on the floor plan, so while in Revit you click in a section view and the software responds like "the user selected a door", AC works like "the user has clicked a point in a section view, in the coordinate x=2 y=1.8, which based on the floor plan and elevation data, corresponds to an area enclosed by a door, so, the user has clicked on a door: select it".
2. Remove the 80's thinking about software: if sketchup and revit can make components and families without programming knowledge, why AC can't do it?
3. Improve the model->view->layout->publish work model. It is a great strength of the software: take advantage of it.
4. GUI. AC has a GUI that you HAVE to learn. Once you get it, you get it; but if you analize it... well... you'll see it lacks a lot. The features about the work environment are awesome. Export and import workspaces, and set them with a few clicks is FANTASTIC!. But the rest of the GUI is just confusing, in the sense that it lacks consistency. I mean, open up and compare the settings window for walls, doors, columns, slabs, zones, dimensions, levels, text, lines, grids, etc... and you'll see. Yes... there are some elements of consistency, but in general you have to dig into every window to know where a parameter is. Revit's GUI is not that good either, but the simplistic manner in which it shows properties (like a spreadsheet), makes it easy to learn, instead of learning a different window for each tool. You know what I mean.
5. Listen to the userbase/clients. You may come up with ideas to implement on the software, based on technology and new standards. That just gets you halfway. The userbase/clients is where the software gets tested and used in real life situations. That's the other half that's missing. Autodesk already learned this lesson. Just look at the complete transformation they're doing with 3ds max.
All this of course sounds like ArchiCAD Utopia. It is. I know it would require great effort and maybe a complete rewrite of the software. My guess is that it won't happen. And looking at AC14 "new" features... well....
Not all is lost. There are some things that can be improved right now, like removing the redundant updating of drawings (if you have the same section view in several layouts and gets updated, it will update every time you open one of those layouts: so update the view once, on the viewmap level, and make the update on layouts instant); or small improvements like better editing paradigm than a pet palette or adding a typing search filter to... everything (like how about hit ctrl-L and start typing to filter some layers that have "arch" on it?, because the current filtering is kind of useless)
One thing is certain: people using AC are starting to really look into Revit as a better option for BIM. I guess.... its time to go with the flow.........
best regards.
Still looking?
