What are new tools for ARCHICAD 13?

[Anonymous]

Hello 🙂
I was wondering if we maybe know what new tools we can expect with the new version of Archicad?
I finaly hope for 3D composite structure layers to be visible, also their 2D representation to be automaticly adjusted to the layer thickness (eg. thermal insulation).
Slab layers and their intersection with wall layers...
Also maybe while defining wall composite layers we can also define each layer height.
Better and more detailed quantity take-off is a must.

[Anonymous]

i have beed AC user for years but today im working on project of coal plant (facade) in autocad . . .
I cant finish it in ac

i need modeling in ac . . .


MODELING TOOLS - MODELING TOOLS - MODELING TOOLS -
Imporved Opengl graphic (like sketchup or some other program)
MORE SPEED
modeling tools, i want to model in AC, posibility to model facade
edit in elevation
Boolean operation represented in 2D window
material assign (AC is terrible in assigning materials, creating new etc)
Native rotation on XYZ (wish old as archicad)
Improved CW
When i import some 3d object in AC, i want to see it without 10000
lines in sections, plan...
When i select element in facade or elevation, i want to that element sty
selected when i go to plan ...
I wish that GS give us 20 imrpovements that can be finish in ac 13 and we can vote what is most wanted

GS read wishes, we have been writing it for years, just pick something from there and u will not make mistake

[Bricklyne Clarence]

mthd wrote:
I would like to see Graphisoft keep up the annual upgrades and not leave it till the last minute to make improvements.

Who does not appreciate the dimensioning upgrades in V12?

If you are not clever enough to keep a pace with technology
then maybe you should find an old program from 10 years ago
that takes 10 times as long to get a job done.

Some comments here sound as if you are not really supporting
the progress of ArchiCad???
............

What progress???!!!

Do you mean progress like a Stair tool that hasn't been fixed - I mean,.....um......'improved', since ArchiCAD 7 or 8 save for a few documentation and 2D representation fixes that allow you to better represent the limited stair types that you might be able to model from their limited templates? Or do you mean progress like version 12 Library parts, doors and windows which don't work correctly with ACv12 forcing one to have to use the version 11 Library parts , if they are available? Or SEO's which don't display properly (or at all) in plan view?

There's a big difference between not supporting this "progress" as you put it, and actually expecting GS to deliver a versatile, robust, and competitive enough product, functional on even the most basic of tasks and worthy enough of the yearly upgrades that they expect their customers to shell out for. Most of the users posting comments, requests, wishes (or even complaints if you wish) on this thread fall in the latter category and have been loyally supporting this product since the very early days. Unfortunately, a lot of the comments and wishes being posted on this thread have been in the Wishlist section for years on end, and the fact that people still have to keep asking for these improvements is just sad and somewhat pathetic ( I mean having to go back to AutoCAD to model and design something simply because ArchiCAD couldn't handle it? Something's just not right with that picture with AC12 considered).
Yes, dimensioning upgrades are nice, but what would be that much nicer would be if we could actually use them (the upgrades) to dimension free-form modeled objects, or even basic but creative architectural objects like custom stairs modeled inside ArchiCAD with native tools and no add-ons, rather than having to go do them with some other program and hope that when we import them back into ArchiCAD, they don't break it for having too many polygons.

And speaking of Yearly upgrades, I think it can be safely concluded that this was a bad baaaad idea for Graphisoft, and certainly beyond debate at this point. Based on half-baked new features that don't function completely or correctly in one release and then having to be completed in the next release (Complex profiles not being able to do curved profiles in version 10 and then being able to in version 11, Curtain wall tool not capable of pure freeform profiles on the Z-axis, (who knows if it will be possible in the next version?) Lightworks - no radiosity etc etc etc), based on Third-party plugins and addons with poor yearly upgrade support that either don't keep up with the AC yearly upgrades (Sketchup-AC for Mac, Cigraph's addons last year) or simply don't keep up at all and just die off (Maxonform). And all just basically based on the fact that a yearly upgrade cycle simply doesn't afford the users enough time to adequately evaluate and use the product long enough (after all the necessary hotfixes to make it halfway functional enough, to upgrade to, that is) to give GS useful feedback towards their next version's upgrade for improvements; - because by the time that comes around, they are already deep in their internal beta-testing cycle and with features mostly locked down, any useful feedback coming back then, is mostly unusable towards the next version. That is, assuming GS actually listened to their users - the Wishlist section would tend to strongly indicate not.

And worse still it doesn't even look like the Yearly upgrade is doing Autodesk any good either, with all their vastly superior resources, considering their own v2010 Revit-ribbon debacle. So why maintain a yearly upgrade cycle to compete with them when it doesn't even work for them and has only served to completely dilute AutoCAD and seems headed to doing the same to Revit?

McNeel ( the makers of Rhinoceros, and a much smaller firm that GS) have always resisted the temptation to go into a more tighter upgrade cycle for competition's sake and tend to maintain their own internally regulated schedule (which often goes up to 2 to 3 years between new versions) with a very open robust beta-testing program that allows them to produce a more mature and feature-complete new version every time they actually do release a new version (for example, the next version - v5, - which is, incidentally still in the Beta-testing/WIP stage, already boasts a new feature set of about 100 new features and close to 200 improvements and fixes at the technical (under-the-hood) level - all while porting the entire program over to the Mac platform to run as a native Mac application; imagine an ArchiCAD release with 100, or 50, or even just 20 new major features).
And to boot, they can still remain competitive enough, so much so that Rhino3D is now the program of choice in most Architecture schools and graduate schools (certainly here in N. America) over both AutoCAD and Revit, and has been a staple of some of the major studios like Zaha Hadid, OMA, Asymptote among others. So it's not undoable or unfeasible, expecially to remain competitive and put out a strong product that still competes year-in, year-out with yearly upgrades from your competitors.

We still love using ArchiCAD, and we certainly appreciate a lot of the major improvements since their own version 8.0 debacle. But that was almost 5 versions ago - time enough for GS to stop patting themselves over the back for getting over that one; and there are still issues with the program that go all the way back to version 6.5 when they at least had the excuse back then, of technological (hardware) limitations to making it function properly or make necessary improvements. Now we have 64-bit technology which would presumably enhance the program's performance (certainly for anyone with more than 4 Gig's of RAM) while complementing their astute multi-core improvements, and yet, still no 64-bit ArchiCAD - just as an example.

So it comes as a little frustrating (more than usual) when users' complaints and improvement requests (such as in this thread) are dismissed by other users (whom GS seems to listen more to), by saying that everything is just hunky-dory, and no need to improve Graphisoft. Incidentally all this is definitely all too late for AC13 (and more than likely for AC14 as well) but them's the breaks when you're on a Yearly upgrade cycle; as a customer, wish your requests and hope for dear heaven, that someone on the development team had the insight to propose (and push for at least some of them) it a few versions ago, a few years ago, because it's probably too late to do anything about it now, and maybe next year as well.


.......just saying.

- Rant over.

[Anonymous]

Hi To the Canadian,

Point Taken, yes we need to get value for money in our upgrades don't we?

I thought the V10 upgrade was worth a years sub?

I hope V13 is a big one too?

Correction

you said

"There's a big difference between not supporting this "progress" as you put it,"

I said "maybe not supporting it" as those persons who are advertising that Revit is the only way to go.

I started learning on V7.0 but the UI held me back from buying it yet.

I was offered a deal on 8.1 so we bought into it but I did not start using it till after the V10 upgrade so by V11 I was using it over Chief Architect V10.

The tracker made it faster to use for me.

There are still lots of ways to speed it up.

I am thankful for the V12 speed up with the processors as well.

Do you really think that big companies will give you your monies worth all
the time?

Not likely it seems to me the bigger a corp grows the more they get away with. You complain to someone and they say "I only work for the company"

I wish I could say that as a sole trader when someone complains?

I only work for the company don't expect me to fix it up.

So what do we here? all withdraw from paying a sub till we get what we want in the next upgrade?

Who is the one or the body that will negotiate for us?

All the best.

[owen]

NeckoFromSarajevo wrote:
GS read wishes, we have been writing it for years, just pick something from there and u will not make mistake

exactly .. not that hard is it?

[Bricklyne Clarence]

mthd wrote:
Hi To the Canadian,

Point Taken, yes we need to get value for money in our upgrades don't we?
I thought the V10 upgrade was worth a years sub?
I hope V13 is a big one too?
Correction
..........

I take you point, and see what you're trying to say.
just a few points however; you said:

mthd wrote:
........
I said "maybe not supporting it" as those persons who are advertising that Revit is the only way to go. .........

I'm not speaking for others, but personally I don't believe that Revit is the only way to go. I don't even think it is THE way to go, as an alternative and certainly not for an ArchiCAD user. Having just run through a trial run on Revit 2010, I can comfortably say that I would never want to work in it from either a design standpoint or even a documentation standpoint - Ribbon or no ribbon. One of the biggest mitigating factors for me is the program's performance in the 3D window and with 3D modeling, and despite the improvements in their 3D engine performance by going to DirectX, it is still unfeasible to comfortably model and edit large geometry and models in 3D, in Revit the way that we are used to in ArchiCAD, especially with large models. It was just a painful experience over there - and I thought that v2009, which even Revit users were complaining about, was bad: v2010 is not that much better, DirectX or not. Which is bizarre when you consider that Autodesk's other DirectX-capable programs (3DS Max, Maya et al) handle gloriously in their 3D windows.

Someone over at the AUGI forums (and who frequently posts here : he knows himself) made a joke about how ArchiCAD takes forever to load the model in the 3D window (which is true, and something I can't stop belaboring, would likely be improved if the program was 64-bit allowing people with up to 10GB of RAM to take advantage of it, but I digress. But this was while conceding a larger point that handling large models and buildings in AC12 versus the same in Revit (he was comparing 2009 in this instance) was not even close to being a competition - ArchiCAD was just plainly faster in this regard. Well, I thought Revit v2010 would be a vast improvement over v2009, but in my not too uninformed or untested opinion, its not that much more improved and certainly not enough for an AC user to ever get used to or want to work in it frequently. Granted Revit has some vast advantages of ArchiCAD in some other areas (someone mentioned the ease of creating custom objects and family parts with their graphical interface in Revit versus the lack of an intuitive graphical interface for or in place of GDL editing (which in the age of visual scripting interfaces such as Grasshopper scripting in Rhino, is just plain stupid) in ArchiCAD, and I whole-heartedly agree with them on this one - I hope GS improve this soon, v14 or v15 if possible), but still not nearly enough to ever make me recommend it to anyone, (particularly and long-time ArchiCAD user) as an alternative or otherwise.

You also said:

mthd wrote:
........

Do you really think that big companies will give you your monies worth all
the time?
Not likely it seems to me the bigger a corp grows the more they get away with. You complain to someone and they say "I only work for the company"
I wish I could say that as a sole trader when someone complains?
I only work for the company don't expect me to fix it up. .......

......well that sounds a lot like something I would expect to hear from an Autodesk developer or employee apologizing for their products' shortcomings ( and I have actually heard similar apologies from some people close enough to their development process giving these kinds of excuses), and not from a Graphisoft developer/employee. Just based on the nature of both firms and their products. You see, Autodesk can afford to piss of or dismiss their customers with that kind of an attitude ( see how their handling the whole Ribbon-fiasco and customer disatisfaction : "....if you don't like the improvements we've made which you think you should like and you need, then pi$$ off. We know what's good for you better than you do.")

Graphisoft, on other hand, in my opinion can't afford to think they can "get away with it" or not have to give you "your money's worth", just because they have your money already. They're the ones at risk of losing their existing users and potential future-users to the self-acclaimed 'industry-standard', so much so, that they would have to have more at stake in this and act like it - the same way the little corner mom-and-pop store at the corner bends over backwards to try to really make their customers feel that much more important and like they're getting their money's worth unlike at the local WalMart Megastore, where they're just another faceless buyer.

I don't really know if the actual employees and developers actually feel like:

"I only work for the company don't expect me to fix it up."

.....but I would really, reaaally hope not, for the sake of the future of the software. I've always been of the opinion that regardless of their often seeming tone-deafness to issues in this forum, that GS developers have always had a certain level of pride and high expectations and standards of their product. That's part of what keeps me still using it despite the frustrations and sometimes misguided strategy on their part - because it (this apparent pride) shows through in the elegance of their product.

And like I already mentioned before, Revit is just not an alternative.

[Anonymous]

I can bet that no1 from GS will ever join our talk here, they dont care...they will develope what they want to develop... I think that AC users must somehow be involved in GS development cos they create program which we buy and use... Why should i buy software which cant rotate own objects and this wish was on table for a long time . . .
Imagine, we will have archicad 13 soon and we r not able to rotate any object in 3d. When i see that i can say that archicad is still in stoneage
Archicad is very limiting software and AC will limit any designer

this down is one image with wishes, if u want more just say, there is planty of them from every part of archicad. So when some1 say archicad is leader in BIM they must be kidding

[Anonymous]

To our Canadian friend,
I had many problems with Chief Architect not listening to our suggestions over the years.

You have similar requests not being heard.

I suggested to Chief to make a poll of what they proposed to put in the next upgrade a list of requests and have those on the talk site who have sub status to vote on what they wanted the most. Lets say on list of 10 items rate them 1 to 10 and see what the sub payers want the most.

They didn't do anything about it yet?

What do you think GS could do to help us get what we want especially
the the sub payer?

I can understand why you might be angry about this and those others who have not had their requests met as I was with Chief.

By the way the only way you would satisfy some people including me
is to take patches out of all the softwares on the market and make the program do what you want.

When no program can do what you want, hire your own engineer to create a new patch in your custom software to make it do what you want.

I suppose we would like to create our own custom Architectural Program

So If I could become a software engineer and fix it up for myself I would.

I would only do it if I had the time and brains for it.

You just cant satisfy everyone in the end it is not possible as you know.

Do you have any Ideas or Solutions to offer here?

By the way Please don't take any offence here because we all face the same dilemma, so keep asking GS for what you want & don't give up.

Cheers,

Manuel.

[Ralph Wessel]

NeckoFromSarajevo wrote:
Imagine, we will have archicad 13 soon and we r not able to rotate any object in 3d.

But you can...

[Mats_Knutsson]

Value with a new release = new features + localization. A good localization is crucial and as important as "new features" imho. Concerning the blobbytechture discussion I don't want to defend the lack of Rhinoesque tools in AC but what do you actually want in terms of free-form-modeling for your daily work as an architect? How much would you use unlimited lofting and blending etc? If you want free form you want totally free form and that's why ZH and the likes use Rhino! AC is very focused on what it is supposed to do. I would myself like to play with free form modeling...of course...it's fun! However it's not very clear to me how to implement it into the BIM model. How would you like "freeform" to be incorporated in a virtual building context? Would it be a separate module? Maybe the modeling issue would be a thread of it's own...Organic/free design from a BIM-perspective!?

/Mats

[Bricklyne Clarence]

Mats_Knutsson wrote:
.......Concerning the blobbytechture discussion I don't want to defend the lack of Rhinoesque tools in AC but what do you actually want in terms of free-form-modeling for your daily work as an architect? How much would you use unlimited lofting and blending etc? If you want free form you want totally free form and that's why ZH and the likes use Rhino! AC is very focused on what it is supposed to do. I would myself like to play with free form modeling...of course...it's fun! However it's not very clear to me how to implement it into the BIM model. How would you like "freeform" to be incorporated in a virtual building context? Would it be a separate module? Maybe the modeling issue would be a thread of it's own...Organic/free design from a BIM-perspective!?

/Mats

.......this discussion has been had and beaten to death on these boards (do a search). One of the salient points in all those discussion is that those who request these Free-form/Organic modeling tools (read better modeling tools, period) are not necessarily interested in designing Zaha-esqe/Gehry-esqe/Blobitecture buildings, but rather for some of the more mundane common-place architectural design tasks that typically require work-arounds with ArchiCAD's current toolset. Tasks like design and modeling of custom-profile stair rails and handles along with railing handles; Roof Fascias with customized characteristic profiles and sections; Custom-profiled Window and Door architraves of potentially vaulted and non-rectilinear doors and windows. And let's not even go into just how plain old custom door/window/stair/[insert generic architectural object not available in the libraries, here] creation is routinely hampered by the limited capacity to just plain model what you can envision and conceive in a straightforward way.

These are objects that exist in Architecture today and have existed in Architecture for the better part of the last couple of Centuries. Not some fluidic blobby looking thing that someone's submitted for a design competition.

Yet try designing one of them without the aid of some work-around that may not invovle have to go back to AutoCAD or even just "fake" it in today with AC12's toolset, and you have another thing coming.

Every single time this issue of better design and modeling tools comes up, someone inevitably attempts to diminish and dismiss it by proclaiming that not everyone (or more specifically, them, in particular) needs to design blobitecture or organic-looking designs in day-to-day architecture, and therefore nobody needs these improvements in ArchiCAD. Which would be fine if that was the point in asking for the improvements but it's not. And it rarely ever is.

If I wanted to design a organic looking curvy building, I would never look to ArchiCAD to try to do that, nor would I want to; there are far better tools out there for that sort of thing. If, on the other hand, I wanted to design a double curving ramp with a customized slope, variable width and customized railing, I would like to hope that I would be able to do it in ArchiCAD in a somewhat straight-forward and logical way, without having to resort to 1001 work-arounds or to ArchiForma or some other third-party plugin or addon (which obviously means having to shell out more money to get them and then spend more time learning them, and then hoping they adequately address the design requirement and then that they document correctly in all views and are respectively parametric like any other ArchiCAD library or gdl object, and finally that they don't bog down the program with a massive polycount - currently a tall order for ArchiCAD, if you ask me).