Upgrading to ArchiCAD V13

[Anonymous]

Well my support subscription invoice has just arrived so with the current state of the economy I had to check, Is the upgrade to version 13 worth me having.

I checked with my reseller who said the only thing he can tell me is that ArchiCAD 13 will have better team work. That would be fine if I was a large practice, but I am not. So for now ArchiCAD 12 will do just fine and I can save the money.

Unless there is a significant improvement in the tools why bother?

[owen]

Karl wrote:
I don't think that there are any tasks that ArchiCAD does that are data intensive enough for distributed computing today, other than rendering - and there is already a network render module for LightWorks, but GS does not license it.

That is interesting .. i did not know that Lightworks had a netrender module. I mean it makes total sense, i guess i just never thought about it. It raises an interesting possibility.

Although rendering really is the only ArchiCAD task i can see that would take advantage of distributed processing, i would not limit that to Lightworks rendering. Although most offices doing animations will use something like Cinema4D or Max, or outsource, there are some using Lightworks quite successfully for stills, compositing with Sketch Renders or Hidden Line renders for example. It is however difficult to do for longer animations particularly for the larger projects more likely to be doing lengthy animations. I'm not saying it is impossible - you can always manually break up the frames and run them on individual machines. However a dynamic network rendering system along the lines of the C4D NetRender application is I think one of the reasons many firms go to something like C4D, it is not necessarily just to improve image quality as there is a substantial difference in the learning curve for something like VRay as opposed to AC's internal rendering options which are relatively point-and-shoot.

Now of course i am not suggesting it is a good idea that GS pursues this - they have much more important things to be directing resources towards. It would however be something i think many people would find attractive and a definite marketing point.

[Karl Ottenstein]

owen wrote:

Karl wrote:
I don't think that there are any tasks that ArchiCAD does that are data intensive enough for distributed computing today, other than rendering - and there is already a network render module for LightWorks, but GS does not license it.

That is interesting .. i did not know that Lightworks had a netrender module. I mean it makes total sense, i guess i just never thought about it. It raises an interesting possibility.

SORRY!! Brain fart, perhaps due to the cold I have. Or old age. Or both.

I don't believe that there is a network render module for LW. It is radiosity, etc. that is available, but not licensed by GS.

Apologies,
Karl

[Thomas Holm]

Laszlo wrote:
...The first result will come in the next major release (ArchiCAD 14) where the BIM Server that is designed to host and serve numerous large projects will be 64-bit compliant on the Mac as well. ...

I too appreciate this openness from GS, which confirms what I wrote here, although at first I was a bit disappointed, since I read this as we cannot expect a full 64-bit Mac Archicad until Archicad 15 at the earliest, and that would mean at least two years from now at the current release rate.

Thinking it over, I realised that this release delay also means that at that time, Graphisoft will not have to keep a 32-bit Archicad/Mac version going in parallel ( to serve those /then/ older IntelMacs that are not able to run 64bit programs, read more here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=4712 )

I find this a benefit because it will make it easier to make a clean break with the old Mac code, and make it easier for Graphisoft to implement new technologies on the Mac side, and leverage the OSX enhancements now coming. I'm just sorry it takes so long.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Thomas wrote:
I'm just sorry it takes so long.

Ditto. But, we can only imagine the emotion (!) that Graphisoft, Adobe and others felt when they continued their development based on promised and pre-release 64-bit Carbon from Apple and then Apple dropped that entirely. I have a feeling they felt something stronger than "sorry".

Karl

[Anonymous]

Ditto. But, we can only imagine the emotion (!) that Graphisoft, Adobe andothers felt when they continued their development based on promised and pre-release 64-bit Carbon from Apple and then Apple dropped that entirely. I have a feeling they felt something stronger than "sorry".

Karl, as always, is a gentleman. 😉

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism

[Thomas Holm]

Karl wrote:
Ditto. But, we can only imagine the emotion (!) that Graphisoft, Adobe and others felt when they continued their development based on promised and pre-release 64-bit Carbon from Apple and then Apple dropped that entirely. I have a feeling they felt something stronger than "sorry"....l

Agreed. But there were not-so-subtle hints (scroll down to "Brave new 64-bit world") that this would happen, long before 2007. As John Siracusa put it at the time: "The only people still doing Carbon development are those with code bases that predate Mac OS X. Apple has been encouraging these developers to port to Cocoa for years now. Now it's finally time for some tough love."

GS could have started this transition earlier. But GS is a small player compared to the giants in the same situation, Adobe and Microsoft (the Mac Office department). And I think the Mac's resurrection as a serious professional work platform has been sort of a surprise to many developers who thought it was doomed some 10 years ago. Now, with the additional success of the iPhone, Apple has a momentum which we will notice in the years to come. I hope GS realises that, and allocates enough resources to leverage that development, and not get left behind.

[Anonymous]

Karl wrote:

Maybe elaborate?

I don't think that there are any tasks that ArchiCAD does that are data intensive enough for distributed computing today, other than rendering - and there is already a network render module for LightWorks, but GS does not license it.

Cheers,
Karl

While rendering was part of that thought the performance and speed seemed to have a substantial boost with the newer machines once the 3D model was generated but the 2D drawings and S/E still took quite a while to generate. I only had limited use with an educational version of 12 but generating the 2D drawings spiked the processors and took quite a while. I would think that whoever was the lead architect would benefit greatly when generating the documents.

[vistasp]

Rakela wrote:
the US is way behind in internet speed, there are 10 nations (at least) ahead of us

Maybe, but in south africa, they found that carrier pigeons transferred data faster than broadband...

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE5885PM20090909

[Thomas Holm]

Jeffrey wrote:
..2D drawings and S/E still took quite a while to generate..

These processes use multiple threads in AC12, and on the right equipment it's substantially faster than AC11.

[Anonymous]

Thomas wrote:
These processes use multiple threads in AC12, and on the right equipment it's substantially faster than AC11.

My only experience is with the AC 12 educational version on the same 32 bit MBP as in your signature. It is the multi threading that would also be what makes it easier or mare advantageous to do. A group of students had done a demo using a common benchmark. They used my G4 667 as the control machine. The render on the benchmark machines was 36 minutes. After about an hour of letting it render itself they quit and used Xgrid. It rendered in about 15 min on a grid of about 30± machines from G4's to MP on various OS's from X.3 to X.5. They cited the reason for the long render time was the G4's 1GB limit on the RAM. A Mac Pro was down to about 5 min with the same project and the same grid.

I can't see how a large project wouldn't benefit from these capabilities.