!Restored: ¿News about AC 12?

[Anonymous]

Hi all!


¿Anybody knows anything about AC 12, please?


I'm hearing rumours, but nothing concrete...


Thanks a lot and regards.



P.S. Like another user says: "forgive my spanglish..."

[TomWaltz]

metanoia wrote:
Doors in a linked and copied unit plan in Revit cannot have unique door numbers. The doors will appear in the schedule as many times as they appear in the model, but they all have the same door number. So the concept of a MOD file is absent in Revit.

Archicad has that same limitation. You can repeat elements, but they won't have unique IDs or anything like that.

[TomWaltz]

Brett wrote:
Some questions answered of non advertised improvements please.(wouldn't it be good if GS publish a PDF of every little improvement they have done from AC 11)

Fill in Beams?
Fill in all instances of complex profiles?
HVAC?
Keynotes if any?
Revision tool?
Favorites holding there settings improved to where they actually do?
What happened to the pre advertised improvements to the indispensable grid tool?

No. (to all of these)

Any improvement of roof slab dashed lines where they meet?(so they don't merge to a solid line)?

I feel like I did see this somewhere, but I might have imagined it. (or maybe it was in a presentation on another software?)

Label tool enhanced?

Only minimal (Labels for Curtain Wall elements and a new "label leader that goes all the way under the text, underlining it)

[TomWaltz]

Don wrote:
From what I am aware of the "curtain wall tool" is almost a misnomer. It can be used to do tile floors, a raised computer floor, suspended ceiling tiles, can easily placed on a sloped surface such as a roof, make handrails, or even a tudor/timber framed wall.

As been discussed previously it really does blurs the line between wall, slab and roof elements.

Just remember, its outline cannot be edited in plan. Only in the 3D window. Not a good limitation for a floor or ceiling tool to have.

It's a shame, because the Curtain Wall Tool also bears the honor of being the first native Archicad 3D element that you draw, from scratch, in an Elevation view. That's a really stunning new method that works pretty well (the curtain wall is placed along the Elevation line in plan, since Archicad does not know how to place the element in plan, but I can live with that)

[TomWaltz]

Karl wrote:

william235711 wrote:
How many cores are involved? How many processors? Is it for all tasks or just a limited number? Which ones?

As many as you have.

It is not for all tasks at the moment - no doubt more to come in the future, but is used for many of them and the speed increase is quite noticeable from starting ArchiCAD, to regenerating sections/elevations and opening the 3D window.

The multi-processing ability is limited to 4 processors.

I've not had a chance to test it, but I'm curious to see how Archicad 12 handles multiple sessions on a multi-processor machine.

[TomWaltz]

Thomas wrote:
Still I think AC 12 is a very important and worthwhile upgrade. If not for anything else, get it for its speed! I think all the betatesters agree that going back to AC11 feels like wading in a swamp compared to AC12.

I've been really underwhelmed with some features, but I think the speed increase alone is worth the upgrade price.

Oh, and Schedules now have linewrap!!! 😄

[Karl Ottenstein]

oreopoulos wrote:
by the way, using openmp to create shared mutlicore aware functions is not hard at all.

In your dreams. Let's give the GS team credit for some major reworking to get important parts of the program multithreaded so that they can take advantage of multiple processors/cores.

It is not at all easy. Starting from scratch is one thing. Taking an existing complex database / data structure that was designed for serial (single processor) access - and modifying it and the access code to permit concurrent access is about as complex as programming gets. The potential to get it wrong is tremendous - and the successful testing of 12 shows that they got it right.

There are things that they can speed up in the future, but we have a huge speed boost within critical areas of ArchiCAD in 12 coming our way soon.

Cheers,
Karl

[TomWaltz]

Dennis wrote:
1. Speed - Great. I have a core 2 duo. Would it make sense to upgrade the processor to quad or 8 core?

I would. AC12 can only use 4 processors, but that's enough to warrant an upgrade in hardware.

3. Partial Structure Display - Don't really need it too much myself - since I typically only model structure anyway. Maybe this will get me to use the composite walls for a change...

I think it's mostly useful for structural drawings and exporting to a BIM-using structural engineer, but there could be other uses we've not come up with yet.

4. Hotlink Module Management - Sounds like a good improvement.

For anyone using nested modules, this is HUGE.

5. Stairmaker Enhancements - I use Archistair so proabably not useful for me. Did it improve to a point where I don't need archistair?...

No. The 2D symbols are a lot better though.

6. 3d Document - Great tool to finally show off the 3d in construction documents! Can't believe how many times I had to resort to a 2d view just to be able to get dimensions on them, and add a 3d view "for reference only" or color / material call outs at most.

Not to mention, they are live (kind of like the Section window)
7. Fill Enhancements - I guess good for SD work???
8. Nudge - Can't belive this made the list of the 12 features over grid tools. Who "nudges" columns?

9. Align & Distribute - I thought we already had align. Also, distribute was possible w/ the multiply command, wasn't it?

11. Dimensioning Input Logic - Finally, logical way to do dimensions. Can't remember how many times I did a series of dimensions, double click, only to find out I had the vertical instead of horizontal...I hope there is the ability to put prefix or suffix to actual dimension..

Much easier to place, still have an annoying flyout to change the placement method, and still no associative prefixes or suffixes.

12. PMK - I never used PMK before because I started in AC10. Would this be a good way to manage standard office details? Instead of making detail viewpoint, save view, copy detail name, set scale, layer combination for every single detail you want to re-use in a new project?

They might be. That's kind of what I was thinking.

[Brett Brown]

Thanks for that Tom, Forgot one, Any improvement for transferring details from pln to pln without having to set up a new independent detail in the receiving pln? What's a PMK, before my time?

[Erich]

TomWaltz wrote:
Oh, that and the fact that Schedules now have linewrap!!! 🙂

Christmas HAS come early!

I am really looking forward to July.

[TomWaltz]

Brett wrote:
Thanks for that Tom, Forgot one, Any improvement for transferring details from pln to pln without having to set up a new independent detail in the receiving pln? What's a PMK, before my time?

A PMK is a transitional file used to put an Archicad drawing onto a layout in Plotmaker, a separate program that we used to have to use to create layouts.

The PMK is a completely 2D, exploded view. Archicad could publish PMKs the same way it does PDF and DWG, making it a relatively simple, if not annoying, process to update the views on Layouts.

Archicad 8.0 introduced "live updating views", but they were highly unreliable, causing a lot of people to keep using PMKs. Archicad 9 was a little better, but still not reliable enough. Archicad 10 got rid of them completely, but the layouts in AC10 were finally robust enough not to need them anymore.