Reliability of Archicad 22

[agroni]

Since beginning of January we switched to Archicad22, meaning we migrated 15 of our running projects. Also new projects are beeing developed in the new version.

How does everyone feel about the realiability of this version (until the release 5009)???

I am a long user and a strong supporter of Archicad, but with version 22 I had the most troubles. The amount of bugs discovered by us is enormeus, compared to previous versions. After each crash, bug, missing stuff we contacted the Graphisoft Support and as a response we got informed that the developer in Budapest has been notified! I don't want to give any summary of how many hours we wasted trying to have that, what we had in ver. 21.

Respect for the work that you are guys doing to develop this complex software. But maybe it would be helpful to have a longer Beta-Testing period? The less bugs the programm has, the more happier the client is going to be

We are going to update soon to 5009 and hopefuly things are going to run more smooth.

Am I the only one with this kind of opinion? How was your experience with Archicad 22?

[Bricklyne Clarence]

Longer beta-testing period would mean longer or more extended release schedules.
Presumably.

This was been debated (on these boards at least) to death in the past, and whatever or however any of us here feel, it would seem like Graphisoft would be reluctant to go this route despite whatever benefit it could provide for the end-users. (and yes, I get the logic for why. A longer release schedule would also mean a reduced revenue stream for them.)

Personally I've never been a fan of this yearly release schedule every since they switched to it from what they had before (which was more prolonged) because as we tend to see, whenever they have a new big feature, you can almost tell even the release that it's likely going to be a buggy version with lots of issues and requiring lots of hotfixes before they finally get it stable enough for reliable heavy usage.
And typically that means December or January or February the following year if the release was in the middle of the summer. Which obviously begs the question, why not just extend the release schedule by another 6 months and use that extra time to properly iron out the bugs and stabilize the program so that by the time it gets a proper public release, the users will hardly require any hotfixes to be able to get up and running.

Of course the alternative (which seems to be more frequent these days) is that we'll get a version with hardly any new features or improvements and which effectively are just service and maintenance upgrade releases - hardly justifying the cost of upgrading (especially if you're going to have to go through another 5-6 months of hotfixes again.......which begs another question as to why a new release with hardly any new features requires any hotfixes if all they did was fix the under-the-hood stuff. But that's a debate for another day).

I don't know.

I mean, it's unquestionably a great program with incredible engineering and development.
But they just always leave one feeling it could be better.

The advice you're likely to get (which most people seem to stick to) is to not upgrade whenever they release yearly upgrades but rather to skip versions and only upgrade after the 5th, 6th or 7th hotfix once you do.
So you only upgrade on even number (or odd number) version upgrades and at the end of the year when they typically are around that 5,6 or 7 Hotfix number.

Obviously that gets a little complicated for folks on subscription plans and such not to mention offices that have to work with partners or collaborators who are on different upgrade cycles from your own firm's.

As for you original question (which I should have answered first), I have no opinion on ArchiCAD 22 since I"m still on 21.
Like you I ran into some pretty serious bugs early on, and I bugged out and went back to 21 waiting to see when I'd jump back in to test the waters again, but just never got around to it.
Now I'm at the point where I might as well just wait for Version 23 to be released and see what they have and if it is enough of a justification to upgrade (at the end of the calendar year) or just slowly work my way to v22 then and skip v23 altogether.

[agroni]

Thanx for the reply

I remember the days when we were working on one version for many years and skipping other version. But back then, I have the feeling the software was more stable than it is today. Also, I don’t prefer these yearly releases. It is simple too much.

We were previously working in 17 -> 19 -> 21 and now jumped to 22. There were two relevant reasons why we had to brake our rule and go with 22. In 21 we were having a lot of performance problems in our big projects (55000m²) in teamwork. Additionally, 21 was not supporting 4K resolutions. That’s why we took the decision. But during my testing phase I did not stumble upon the problems that we are experiencing because they are very deep inside the menus, which I off course did not simply have the time to test.

When upgrading, we never took the first release since it is known to have the biggest bugs of the them all.
But in AC22 also with the second release 4023, there were incredibly a lot of errors. Today there is the 5009 (we still need to update 50 PCs), and I don’t believe our reported bugs will be eliminated since there was not a lot of time from report to release. In the release notes you will find other 15 eliminations of crashes!

As I mentioned in my first post, the most annoying thing with 22 is the missing options that we already had in 21. Our team had possibilities in 21 to do something, but in 22 not anymore…or hopefully until the next update release. So, we are handicap in our daily procedures.

You are right about installing the software until GS releases the 4th or 5th update.

I also love the program (no doubt about that) and I use it since almost all of my career. Maybe I am frustrated with this update, since I wanted something better for our office and did a more downgrade then an upgrade. Above all of that, I have invested too much time to prepare our office template and migrate all the projects to the new version.
But I am still positive (we have to be) about the future improvements.

[Barry Kelly]

agroni wrote:
As I mentioned in my first post, the most annoying thing with 22 is the missing options that we already had in 21. Our team had possibilities in 21 to do something, but in 22 not anymore…or hopefully until the next update release. So, we are handicap in our daily procedures.

I am not aware of anything that was in 21 that is missing in 22.
I must say though, that I have never explored the teamwork side of Archicad.

Maybe you could list the missing items - but not in this part of the forum.
Please post to the 'Working in Archicad' section or any other part of the forum if you think it is more relevant.

Barry.

[agroni]

You are right, the word missing is a bit maybe exaggerated since everything is in place. What I mean by “missing”, is that a certain small option of a setting is not there. It was there in 21, but due to probably programing circumstances it was forgotten to be put in 22 or maybe it conflicts with some other script. I won’t do the list here, since I already have reported all the 11 cases to Graphisoft. But if anyone asks for this problem, I will gladly write back.

So, we are left just with hope that it will be implemented in one of the future updates…

[Eduardo Rolon]

Check your Work Environment. There were some items that GS decided to turn off and they might affect migrated projects or copy/pasting from them