CADLINK REVIEW OF ARCHICAD NINE

[Dwight]

http://www.aecbytes.com/review/ArchiCAD9.htm

[Scott Davis]

Very nice rendering examples!

What does the author mean by this?

Currently, ArchiCAD has no guarantee of model accuracy, since it does not enforce the user to create the model in a specific way. Modeling errors—and there could be many of these—will have to be detected by external applications

Is it true that the model may not be accurate, and therefore the CD's are not accurate?

[Ben Cohen]

The fact that Archicad does not force the user to create the model in a specific way is a plus. I know some other softwares "force" users to model in specific ways eg Chief Architect and the like which creates horrendous in-flexibility. I suppose these softwares allow the user to turn off this feature, but then you would lose your "guarantee" that way wouldn't you.
The bottom line is crap in / crap out

[Dwight]

In my ArchiCAD illustration service, I often receive bad models. [But not you, Dave.] I call them "monkey models" because of the saying 10,000 monkeys in a room with typewriters will someday write a play as good as Shakespeare, while in reality, lacking a command of English, they might, in ten years or so, type out an entire sentence.

Like that gorilla who could sign. They told her to make a sentence with the word "meat" in it and she signed "Meat meat meat meat meat."

And so it is with ArchiCAD. So easy to be bad, yet a little discipline solves the problem.

[Anonymous]

Scott wrote:
Is it true that the model may not be accurate, and therefore the CD's are not accurate?

It is possible to model elements badly, just as it is in any other CAD program. ArchiCAD does do a good job of making it graphically obvious when this happens as long as one maintains high quality standards.

I believe what was meant is that there are no built in collision detection tools and things of that sort. This can be done as a post process in Naviworks if I recall correctly. It would be nice to have things like collision detection and code checking as optional add ons to work interactively.

[Djordje]

Matthew wrote:
I believe what was meant is that there are no built in collision detection tools and things of that sort. This can be done as a post process in Naviworks if I recall correctly. It would be nice to have things like collision detection and code checking as optional add ons to work interactively.

There is such a thing. Solibri model checker.

[Ralph Wessel]

Scott wrote:
What does the author mean by this?

Currently, ArchiCAD has no guarantee of model accuracy, since it does not enforce the user to create the model in a specific way. Modeling errors—and there could be many of these—will have to be detected by external applications

Is it true that the model may not be accurate, and therefore the CD's are not accurate?

We encountered this problem developing the GBS Energy add-on. The software tries to discover where the building spaces are by analysing the model, but it won't succeed if there are gaps between walls which 'leak' the spaces into each other or to the exterior. However, we do give the user the option to clean up or extend the work done by the software to overcome this issue. If the user produces a model with full closure, the software will fill all the spaces Zones with with no assistance.

I don't believe there is any answer to this problem either because different applications don't have the same definition of an 'accurate model'. This isn't really a CD issue though - you simply get what you draw (garbage in, garbage out). ArchiCAD itself is dimensionally extremely precise.

The other major problem is that you will always run into problems if the software is designed to enforce modelling rules. At some point, it will reject something which is perfectly valid and the user will end up fighting with the software. For example, I turn off many of the automatic assistance in MS Office because it ends up doing things for me which are simply wrong and it becomes a nuisance. Also, consider the problems we already have trying to connect more than 3 walls correctly at an intersection in ArchiCAD. The software is trying to help, but the problem is simply too complex to be codified.

[Anonymous]

Djordje wrote:

Matthew wrote:
I believe what was meant is that there are no built in collision detection tools and things of that sort. This can be done as a post process in Naviworks if I recall correctly. It would be nice to have things like collision detection and code checking as optional add ons to work interactively.

There is such a thing. Solibri model checker.

It works interactively? I thought it was a post process, i.e. output model, run check, return to AC to fix.

[Aussie John]

I noticed in the review that a fill applied to the slab was applied to all surfaces (sides). Is this really true?? or can you select which surface to apply the fill to?

[Dwight]

A slab fill is only seen in plan