Archicad PR

[KeesW]

My favourite (but sad) topic. Attended the National Australian Institute of Architect's conference and Designex in Sydney last week (Designex is probably the largest interior design/building product show in Australia and is held annually in either Sysdney or Melbourne). Revit was there but, alas, no Graphisoft. This is, of course quite normal since Graphisoft believe that customers can be conjured out of thin air from existing users. More serously, Revit told me that Woods Bagot, one of Australia's largest architectural practices, with a humungous number of Archicad licenses, was changing to Revit. I hope that this is untrue because they have made enormous investments in creating templates and GDL objects to suit their practice. Can a better informed AUS AC user can allay my concerns?

[Rakela Raul]

it may have more to do with the multidisciplinary nature of Revit and less to do with ArchiCAD's actual feature set

very polite !!

I know a County that now requires BIM and they prefer Revit BUT 'consultants can use other BIM Packs'

I feel the pressure to learn RV, the pressure is bigger by the day

[Anonymous]

Again, Wes, history is telling.

If you look at this link
http://www.graphisoft.com/support/ifc/References/ifc_int.html
you will see they (Woods bagot - WB) were major promoters of IFCs as a way to talk between different software.

So if your theory is correct, and Woods Bagot want to have all consultants working on one software platform, they have obviously rejected IFCs as a workable solution....... the implications for our industry are clear - in the words of Dwight - it's in(r)evitable...

[Dwight]

rwallis wrote:
it's in(r)evitable...

Nice twist.

[Anonymous]

IFC is a mess. It can't be counted on at all. So then you have people all tied up in proprietary platforms, and then the world starts getting really boring... then some upstart start-up gets a pile of money together to come up with an innovative new product with a promising future... and then...

D a m n !

[Anonymous]

Wes, I could not agree more with your sentiments on IFCs.

The inherent problem with IFCs IMHO is that two translations occur with any information sharing. It has taken the industry years just to get *.DWG files translated properly (and that's a one step translation!). And how about the battles with Microsoft and Word formats (again one step translations)? These precedents do not bode well when you consider the order of magnitude more complex a BIM file is - by way of comparison.

Of course some (European?) Governments may legislate for open standards, but a unified model has so many inherent advantages - not only during design and documentation, but in post occupancy too.

[Rob]

I would be very surprised if WB was in the process of a total switching to Revit.... utterly unfeasible for the company of this size.... but I can just speculate as you do...

I have said this somewhere on this forum sometime ago:
one proprietary format will not ever work in building industry just because of the shear number of consultants and trades involved. Each of them prefers to use bespoke software. I do not want to end up with a scenario where I would be forced to choose e.g. an engineer just because they use a particular proprietary platform as opposed to their professional capabilities.

Yes it is true that IFC is not really there however so far it is only serious option on the market. And yes translating any of the available formats carries a potential errors by default. The only way (my opinion) to control it is a full-on IFC server with standardised interface to keep integrity of data. Sure if you put sh*t in you would get sh*t out but that's a different cuppa...

BTW I have talked to a fella who runs BIMServer project in Denmark (?) (unfortunately the project is not mature enough for a serious hammering) about IFC compatibility. They ran some tests with Revit and it seems that Adesk is deliberately screwing IFC up... well I suppose GS could answer to this with some optimised and workable IFC import/export in near future perhaps.

[Anonymous]

I'm not surprised. I learnt today of another Australian mid sized architectural firm that are going to jump ship from Archicad to Revit notwithstanding that they have been long term users of Archicad and have an extensive list of projects done in Archicad.

[Anonymous]

This is getting away from the topic of the OP, but the GSA (in the US) MUST demand IFC that meets the rigours of testing. And so must any other client or body requesting the BIM model after construction for FM purposes.

No Revit RVTs.
No ArchiCAD PLNs.
No Bentley DGNs.
No AutoCAD Architecture DWGs either 😉

All IFC, all the time.

Actually -- on the IFC thing -- it really depends on how the geometry was built. I've banged out a few IFCs myself from Revit and checked them in Solibri and most of the time they come out OK. But if I do anything remotely irregular, you can't be sure of what you'll get.

@Rob K: what makes you think Adesk is sabotaging their IFC export?

[NandoMogollon]

metanoia wrote:
All IFC, all the time.

... I second this...

Nando

[Anonymous]

metanoia wrote:
No Revit RVTs.
No ArchiCAD PLNs.
No Bentley DGNs.
No AutoCAD Architecture DWGs either 😉

All IFC, all the time.

I always seem to agree with Wes.

Proprietary file types are instruments of service and not deliverables. If the clients/authorities want BIM deliverables they must be in a neutral, public format (or formats). For now IFC seems to be the only game in town (or, more precisely, the world). DWF might have a run at it (it certain has a place) and I'm sure Adobe would like to see 3D PDF take a piece of the action, but I'm not sure either of these has the teeth to take a big bite of BIM.

The requirements for working formats (such as RVT, PLN, etc.) are very different than for exchange/archive formats. I don't think they can or should be incorporated into a single format.