Is the current Archicad good enough to come back to?

[Anonymous]

I left Archicad after version 8.0 soured me on it...

I found the bugs hard to deal with and the 8.1 fix didn't really make up for the slow speed on my then state-of-the-art PowerBook. And the awkward 2-d/3-d bifurcation...

But much has happened since then...



1. Does the Maxon Form system really work well? Can you easily make non-orthogonal geometries and wild blobs/shapes, etc? Is it fast enough to go back and forth? Can you go back and forth from Maxon into Archicad and vice versa?
2. Do you still have to work on stairs and roofs in 2-d?
3. Can you make double hung windows in 3-d without having to go through 16 steps to put a lot of pieces together in different views?
4. Is the speed on the Mac acceptable? 2 ghz MacBook Pro? 2,5 ghz PowerMac? both have 2 gigs of ram
5. Does Studios Architecture still use Archicad? If not, what happened?

Do you find it fun to use?

Cheers,
Wm

[Anonymous]

Chazz wrote:
There were lots of serious bugs in 7 but 8 was just unusable.

Maybe it's just me, but I haven't had serious problems with any version of ArchiCAD except 8.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your thoughtful responses.

I want unvarnished information. I remember trying to plot from 8.0 and it taking 45 minutes to redraw the sheet and the spinning beach ball to stop. That was the past.

Is Archicad fast enough to do mid-size projects on? on the Mac platform? on 2.4 ghz MacBook Pro?

Is it any simpler to make 3-d objects that it used to be? I remember having to go through about 16 steps to make a double hung window. I had to constantly change the view and save it as a part and then remember I was importing it into a 2-d plan view. In light of Sketchup and other programs that handle 3-d space well, this is unacceptable.

Has this changed?

And does Maxonform work well? Is teh speed acceptable on a high-end Mac laptop?

Thanks again!

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

I think the thing is that everybody that reads this forum and can possibly respond to your questions considers ArchiCAD good enough to have kept on using it all the time, or decide to start using it recently (that is, the response to your subject question in this forum can only be 'yes'). In order to make up your own mind the best idea would be to download it, try it in demo mode, check the tutorials and manuals and make the specific how-to questions in the specific forums.

[Anonymous]

I have tested several CAD applicaitons and still think AC is the best of them. Of course there are many things I don't like in it and many more I want to see implemented in it. But if all my wishes are fulfilled AC will become the perfect CAD application, and this is not possible in the real world!

How do you decide if it is "good enough"? Compared to what? You have to compare it to similar applications, and not to some combined idealistic product of Max, Allplan, Excel and Photoshop together. Though it would have been nice to have such a product!

For example I always tell my students when they start to praise Max's modelling capabilities: Max can model everything, but cannot draw a simple architectural section or floorplan!

I find AC better than Autocad (of course!) and Allplan. I have worked with these. I have a friend of mine who works with VectorWorks, Allplan and Autocad. He prefers VectorWorks but considers AC superior to it. I haven't tried Revit due to lack of time to learn it, but I don't like its text-oriented approach. I prefer Icons!

And to finish with- I am one of the above mentioned users who migrated from 11 to 10. The reason is not that AC11 is a bad product - it is an unfinished product! But as an experienced Windows user I know how to handle this - just wait for the ServicePack 2!

[Anonymous]

I have used AC8,9,10&11;Revit Architecure 2008, ADT and AutoCAD. I can tell you that the only contenders are AC & Revit. At an architectural firm i think the most beneficial way to make a decision on which product to use is to look at the available users. Because both programs work OK, just very different.

I do use ArchiCAD but it does not appear that they have enough money to throw at the product to make it work better. And why doesn't Graphisoft use some of the good ideas from Revit, such as the temp/permanent dimension input and the stability of the program.

[Anonymous]

Thanks again for your thoughtful replies. It's been a year since Nemetschek purchased Archicad. Does anyone think that Allplan and Archicad will be merged to save money?

That's one thought I have before spending $4k. I don't see Nemetschek maintaining 3 programs.

What do you think Archicad's road map will be?

[Djordje]

william235711 wrote:
Thanks again for your thoughtful replies. It's been a year since Nemetschek purchased Archicad. Does anyone think that Allplan and Archicad will be merged to save money?

That's one thought I have before spending $4k. I don't see Nemetschek maintaining 3 programs.

What do you think Archicad's road map will be?

Nemetschek owns Graphisoft, but it runs itself. Just like Maxon and the producers of VectorWorks. All the same owner, however, each company has its path.

[Thomas Holm]

william235711 wrote:
Thanks again for your thoughtful replies. It's been a year since Nemetschek purchased Archicad. Does anyone think that Allplan and Archicad will be merged to save money?

That's one thought I have before spending $4k. I don't see Nemetschek maintaining 3 programs.

What do you think Archicad's road map will be?

It's at least four major programs, actually. They have Allplan, Archicad, Cinema4D and Vectorworks and of course some others, see http://www.nemetschek.com/

I would guess the first thing they'd do is to split the market so these programs compete less with each other. But I'm not sure, it seems some recent efforts like C4F R10 Architecture edition points another way. And I don't see how to link the recent sell-out of Virtual Construction (Vico software) with this strategy. Maybe they're just for fun assembling items to build a Swiss knife of CAD,and some fall behind!

But if you try to see it from above, it's obvious that they're building a strong position to take on the mraket struggle against Autodesk. A very much stronger position than Graphisoft had on its own. And since I think Archicad is the only item on the knife that has a chance to take on Revit, I think Archicad will get stronger out of this merger.

To really utilize the combined strenghts without cracking too many eggs on the way, Nemetschek needs to take it easy and go slowly forward, and the various developer groups need to give up some of their respective prestige too. And we all know that the latter issue might be the hardest (..ahem..).

[Anonymous]

Europe, being more compartmentalized than North America, seems to have more pockets of users using their chosen app. So Nemetschek couldn't really "pull an Autodesk" and say, hey: we've bought ArchiCAD and we want you to start using it rather than your software. But they almost should -- they need to consolidate as they look into the future. Allplan is hopelessly complicated and Vectorworks is just plain hopeless. I think Nemetschek should dive right into developing AC for all disciplines like Adesk is doing with Revit. The best program to compete with Revit is the one that has the best chance to do so -- and that's ArchiCAD. If Nemetschek thinks Adesk isn't going to invade Allplan territory and convert people to a simpler app to use... they'd be mistaken, so I would recommend they get ready now!

[Thomas Holm]

So Wes, I'd never imagined that we'd agree on anything, but there you are!