Archicad Marketing

[KeesW]

What a disappointment. Went to the annual RAIA conference and associated design exhibition in Sydney a few weeks ago. It is the largest building product exhibition in Australia. Autocad and Revit were prominant but guess who was missing? No prizes here - no ArchiCad! Was chasing building material information on the net and came accross companies producing details for about 6 CAD packages - even for DataCad would you believe. But --you guessed it --- not ArchiCad.

I think Graphisoft is taking its users for granted. I like seeing my software of choice prominantly displayed and used in our industry. I don't like being reminded that Revit is probably as good and are trying much harder to get market share. When was the last time Graphisoft made an irresistable offer to entice other CAD users? When did they last make existing users an offer they couldn't refuse? Instead, those of us on a subscription in Aus get access to 'freebies' that are mostly out of date, going back to version 6.5 that we can't even open!

But I am wasting my breath and indignation. Graphisoft is not interested. If I change to Revit (and I have considered it) it is because of Graphisoft's indifference to its competition, its complacency, and its habit of producing upgrades with ragged edges, that never quite work as promised.

[TomWaltz]

yeah, their marketing is pretty pathetic. If you don't already know Archicad exists, you would have a hard time just hearing about it.

[Anonymous]

As far as the aus freebies go, everyone i work with tries to avoid them at all costs they used to have a good set of windows and doors did just about what ever you needed but even they haven't been updated for god knows how long, i don't think they even work with the new custom profile walls, i really hope GS do something about this as it is eternally frustrating, i would say it is the local guys being stretched to far and not being able to invest time in library development.

[owen]

Our practice Design Partner was the conference Creative Director and people in our office did alot of work organizing the conference. Several of us commented on the lack of a Graphisoft presence (particularly following the design computing sessions kicked off with Autodesk ads to a room of several thousand people).

It all came down to money - Autodesk has a lot of it to spend - on development and on marketing.

This is why eventually Revit is going drive ArchiCAD into the ground. Right now i think ArchiCAD is a better product but it seems Revit is catching up fast and it will not be long before it overtakes. I just cannot see Graphisoft pulling anything out of their hat that would make any impact on this trend. They had an opportunity when Constructor was part of their product line - this was a revenue stream built from augmenting an existing product which would potentially dwarf what they achieve with ArchiCAD. Then they sold it/split it off/whatever. AutoCAD has established a wide userbase which Autodesk are repeating with the various Revit packages. Some may subsidize development of others but the end result for Autodesk is a solid suite of packages to suit different users who can then work together efficiently - this makes it extremely attractive and easy to market. Graphisoft on the otherhand has no real client base outside architects and in fact seem to be avoiding this at all cost.

[Chazz]

Autodesk has not killed off Maya on OSX so maybe there is hope of a Mac version of Revit. That plus a competitive upgrade/crossgrade would be all I need to jump. Graphisoft used to offer a substantial discount (like 50% off) when you switched to ArchiCAD from something else, which is how I bought in to begin with.

[Thomas Holm]

owen wrote:
They had an opportunity when Constructor was part of their product line - this was a revenue stream built from augmenting an existing product

It's still built on Archicad. I guess there is still a revenue stream from the licenses, now without the marketing costs.

[TomWaltz]

Chazz wrote:
Autodesk has not killed off Maya on OSX so maybe there is hope of a Mac version of Revit

No, there's really not. There's a huge difference between maintaining and existing product in a platform and completely porting it to another platform, especially when that program is completely written in Visual Studio.

[Rob]

What a disappointment. Went to the annual RAIA conference and associated design exhibition in Sydney a few weeks ago. It is the largest building product exhibition in Australia. Autocad and Revit were prominant but guess who was missing? No prizes here - no ArchiCad! Was chasing building material information on the net and came accross companies producing details for about 6 CAD packages - even for DataCad would you believe. But --you guessed it --- not ArchiCad.

AFAIK GS Australia is a privately own operational unit and completely separate to GS Hungary HQ. So, if AC was not there I would direct my displeasure to GS-AU directly as I reckon, they are responsible for this marketing blunder. (and they will all hate me after reading this)

[owen]

Thomas wrote:

owen wrote:
They had an opportunity when Constructor was part of their product line - this was a revenue stream built from augmenting an existing product

It's still built on Archicad. I guess there is still a revenue stream from the licenses, now without the marketing costs.

True .. although it is only a license fee, not the profit from the full product. There is efficiency in a larger development & marketing team working under a single banner than two independent companies. Also does this mean the Constructor guys have to rely on updates to ArchiCAD to develop their own product? I can't see that lasting very long. It just doesn't make sense to me to have two separate companies when 70%+ of their product is the same.

[Chazz]

TomWaltz wrote:

Chazz wrote:
Autodesk has not killed off Maya on OSX so maybe there is hope of a Mac version of Revit

No, there's really not. There's a huge difference between maintaining and existing product in a platform and completely porting it to another platform....

Mind you, Maya was ported fairly recently (but I think before Alias was acquired by Autogiant). The more relevant difference is that there was, and is, a Linux version of Maya.

Still, even if a Revit-on-OSX version does not seem likely now, its probability is governed by the same forces as all such decisions: bottom line. If Apple and OSX continue their metioric rise (and even their back door assault on the enterprise ), Autodesk will have no choice but to port. Plenty of Autodesk sharholders are --or will be-- Mac users.