Design Process Question

[prigowasu]

Our office is evaluating our design and documentation process. We are a residential architecture firm specializing in high end homes and providing full interior design services (including FF&E). We appreciate using Archicad to document projects. However, our design staff is having difficultly using the software to efficiently design and iterate within the SD and DD phases of work. We often fall back on Sketchup for quickly designing our initial massing models on the architecture side and interior casework on the interiors side. Are we making a mistake continuing to use Sketchup for early design work? It ultimately comes down to the ease, fluidity and looseness that designing in Sketchup has over Archicad. Has anyone else ran into this conundrum? I’d appreciate hearing what some other Archicad offices are doing in terms of design process.

[DGSketcher]

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@jl_lt wrote:

My gripe and frustration on archicad is that with a little focus and real leadership it could be much much better than all the competition put together.

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Absolutely. Shame they're not listening, and the Roadmap offers no reassurance things are getting better anytime soon.

[jl_lt]

Agree. But i actually would like them not to listen that much and make their own way. Like they did before some blindfolded shareholders took over. Listening to too many voices without clear vision can lead to a cacophony of noise. And nothing comes out of it.  

I cant imagine Steve Jobs asking around too much when developing his products.

This is the iphone, sayeth he, and you are going to like it.  

[DGSketcher]

I may be wrong, but I think Steve Jobs (& Bill Gates), had the vision to build their businesses by delivering tools to improve the way we work & live. I'm sure there is a counter argument to this all this technology, but anyway, my point is you can't build a business if you don't deliver what your users want or need, and personally I think GS are so lost in a fantasy about Metaverse type technologies, (Don't see much of that anymore), they have lost the connection with how we all communicate with the poor guy in a muddy field holding a hammer, saw and tape measure. But not to worry, the robots are going to do the dirty work for all of us very soon... it will be fine... even on the small projects... 🙄 Sony had a huge chunk of the portable music market stitched up at one point, shame they didn't have the vision to create the iPOD, which does the same job only better, smaller & simpler.

[jl_lt]

Yeah, but thats kinda the point. Independently of what one might think of those 2 guys, at least they had a vision. Then acted on it, delivered and then the markets decided. In some cases they CREATED the market.       Right now Archicad seems like a little ship in the middle of the sea without any clear direction. At some point someone needs to say "this is where we want/need to go". 

Anyway, this Artificial inteligent stuff  trully gets scarier (i think in a good way) by the day.