Architects: Revit or Archicad?

[Anonymous]

HII
Just gauging the popularity and usage of both Revit and ArchiCad in the industry. The school I'm in teaches and forces us to ArchiCad it in some of our works, which is odd considering that a majority of studios in our country uses solely Revit.

Is there something that ArchiCad that Revit does not offer? And the other way around?

[Erwin Edel]

No experience with Revit, but it is a tried and tested and proven bit of software. Same as ARCHICAD.

Some things will work better in one or the other.

In my time (end of last century ) we were forced to use Allplan, but everyone used AutoCAD to draw their projects. A bit later everyone used MAYA to model 3D and AutoCAD to make the technical drawings. Students are odd.

Without meaning disrespect, don't fool yourself into thinking you will be an experienced user from using the software at school. Working at an architect firm will teach you so much more about technical drawing and unless you are somehow very much Team ARCHICAD or Team REVIT for life, you will apply for a job at some firm and they will be using one or the other or maybe something completely different. If they are smart, they will send you off on a course to learn to use the program and then teach you their method of working with it.

Try both, assuming REVIT offers a free student version too. If you are working in a team, stick to what the team knows best.

[DGSketcher]

Personally I crossed swords with Autodesk a few years back and now see them as nothing more than a mega corporation seeking world dominance e.g. too big to care & profit first agenda. Yes, they can create the tools, but I feel Graphisoft are a bit more passionate and innovative about what they do.

Don't be surprised if you get biased responses from this Archicad forum

[Anonymous]

I would say… whatever you know better.

I have tried Revit and Allplan and both lack of good and intuitive interface which was very well developed in AC over last year. And to be honest is one of the main things in Architectural work.

Revit and Allplan, however, have more open database access and the possibility to write simple scripts. In terms of AC, you need to build your own Addons to make some advance stuff. I'm not sure how collaboration in Revit works in real life - not only youtube video - but the concept itself is powerful.

Back to the real life... there is also pricing... Autodesk started to have a ridiculous policy... because of their marketing position fees stated to be very big.

[Anonymous]

As Erwin says I came for the last century when we use auto cad to develop a technical 3d project, the get main lines for a section extracting sections from a 3d model, and then using 3d max (worse interface program together adobe suite products, can't say which one is worst) to render final presentations. But that was very annoying because any changes means that you have to redraw the 3d model in autocad and so on...

Archicad ( now this is the best interface of all programs I was working with) is very useful bcz changes are immediate but the big problem is rendering options, the engine is not very powerful and it is very limitated with few tutorials in the net. I think that Revit have a conection to v ray, so in my little experience and bearing n mind that modelling is the easy part of a 3d program and assuming that revit and archicad has the same capabilities in 3d modelling I will choose revit bcz it has mas exterior resource, tutorials and it is possible to use better render engines like v ray.

[Anonymous]

Heh… Those were Times.... and later you needed to export stuff via 3ds format... and it usually model was crappy because of weird triangulation and unweld meshes…

Anyway, I have to disagree with the engine.. it is quite powerful. Comparing to the previous engine - Lightworks - is way better.
That's true… custom materials are mostly horrible and they don't use all the possibilities of the engine. It takes a while to understand what is were. But any way you can do some decent renders for day to day stuff in AC no time wasted for import/export. Offcourse professional super pretty rendering is probably not possible to do but...
Professional render is 80% detailed model and assets anyway so it's still out of the scope of architect work it's more CG.

By the way, there is a possibility to write engines to for AC but it seems that ChaosGroup doesn't have much interest in it.

[ryejuan]

Hi,

It usually depends on the individual using the software. I have learned both ArchiCAD and Revit, in real life it all matters what software the company is using you need to learn it and use their company standards as well (alot of requirements).

Integration of both is the main challenge... (sometimes it's political. 😉) I'm also trying to implement a workflow in our company for ArchiCAD and Revit. Both software has its strengths and it all comes down to the users.

FYI: Revit can't save higher versions of Revit into lower versions of Revit so you're opted to upgrade to the latest version of it.
I still prefer ArchiCAD over the other.

[Anonymous]

Both ArchiCAD and Revit is BIM, but they work very differently and my suggestion would be to try both and decide after which one to use as your main tool.

In your professional life, you will see the need to know most used softwares at least at the basic level and your time spent on learning two or three different programs will not be lost. especially when you are still at school.

I did try Revit but did not find the reason to move from Archicad, for a simple reason - everything I am doing in AC has to be done in a more complicated way in Revit - it just did not offer simplification - and I am always in search to make my workflow as simple as possible to have more time on the creative part of the project.

[Ahmed_K]

i can tell you that ArchiCAd is much better for Architects, the design tools he offers are unbeatable, the workflow flexibility and control margin are huge, you can do anything you want,
working on the same file with engineers, like revit users says always, wasn't and never be an advantage, Revit has huge problems on IFC importing and exporting, so they prefer to work on a same file,
try to draw a curtain wall on ArchiCAD , then try to make it on revit, Stairs, (revit nightmare), walls, railings..
i learned vray just to know what this software is , and to know how to communicate with engeneers, cos they often use it here,
Architects use revit, some use archicad, but revit users are not convainced, some continue and some switch to archicad

[qbic-ft]

Revit 2021 is out and the only improvement is Slanted Walls you can adjust the angle of the wall and everything else is still terrible. Maybe in 10 years from now will be like ArchiCAD 22