Mechanical Electrical Plumbing

[Anonymous]

When using ArchiCAD, how do you incorporate Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing into the drawings?

[Anonymous]

Use consultants.

(Please excuse me for being glib...)

Seriously though. There has been some work on MEP for ArchiCAD, but from what I understand it either didn't work well enough (ie didn't scale up to the big buildings) or perhaps they just didn't have the where with all to compete with the established players.

For doing basic mechanical stuff like exposed ducts and such there are probably some library parts available and Archiforma from Cigraph might do the trick. You can also do a lot with the wall, beam and column tools and custom profiles.

For the basic electrical plans (switches and lighting, power and signal) that architects do there are symbols in the standard library as well as third party parts (like Electrigon).

For plumbing the answer is pretty much the same as ductwork, but since very little plumbing is ever exposed I haven't seen much call for it.

[Anonymous]

So would an export of ArchiCAD drawings into Acad be the most direct route?

[Anonymous]

It depends entirely on what you are trying to do.

If it is to create MEP working drawings the standard approach is to export DWG backgrounds to be used in the engineer's CAD software (typically AutoCAD). Some engineers use 3D software or other programs that may require other or additional formats.

For construction coordination a 3D model is needed which may be DWG, IFC, or even 3DS in some cases. Unfortunately ArchiCAD cannot output ACIS solids and the DWG is triangulated (wherever there are holes). IFC seems generally best. ArchiCAD 10 can also save NavisWorks files (if you own Navis) but the translators have not been updated to version 11 yet (and likely won't be since the acquisition).

For 3D design coordination IFC is the way to go.