Why does it take hours to try and do a SIMPLE handrail etc.

[CPGQ]

I want a wall mounted handrail, with brackets. 2 hours later, I give up. I am going to do it in SketchUp and import. Pathetic.

A 40mm diameter linear handrail along a wall with 90 degree wall mounted brackets. 200,000,000,000 settings, no idea what they are doing, no result after 2 hours. Each added item results in different materials?

In Archicad, I managed to finally get A railing, with a 150mm overhang (no idea where this is turned off) and floating brackets not connected to the wall. I am not going to embarrass my practice issuing this drawing.

This is not acceptable.

Vectorworks does this in its sleep.

2 minutes in Sketchup, job done. WHY Graphisoft? Please explain.

These simple tasks seem impossible with this incomprehensible clunky railing tool.

I used 3DMD railing tool in the past (I think it's dead now). It worked. It was easy to understand. It was VERY powerful. Why can't ArchiCAd just buy this and develop further? Look at the interface they offer compared to the mess Graphisoft offer.

Why do Archicad insist on pushing this mess onto premium paying customers? Archicad is not cheap.

The stairs tool is also crap. 5,000,000,000 settings but incomprehensible and impossible to get desired results.

I want a simple dog leg winder stairs... impossible without actually getting the calculator out and drafting it first, then tracing the drafting lines.

This is getting tiresome. The energy wasted doing trivial tasks are distracting enormously from the design process, where my energy is now being spent trying to work around limitations rather than innovate.

Operating system used: Mac Apple Silicon

 

[CPGQ]

This is the railing tool we should have, this is included by Graphisoft in the Italian version;

http://www.3dmediadesign.it/objects.html

Whereas this took hours of effort and frustration;

Made of roofs, slabs, hidden cutting slabs etc.

All of this is out of the box with the 3DMD tool.

I'm going to download it again to see if it works. It's only $20 per tool. I used a trial of it years ago, then went to Vectorworks and now I'm back to ArchiCAD.

[CPGQ]

Thanks for that.

Obvious now that you say it. I used a Topsail instead of a Handrail, but 99% of the time, the top rail is the handrail, so this is not intuitive.

[CPGQ]

Yep.

The site modelling tools are light years ahead of ArchiCad, but overall I prefer ArchiCad, once you get in the zone.

Vectorworks also suffers from the "too many options" but buried problem. The saving grace is its superior method of doing favourites, and being able to grab bits from other project files with ease. I cut and paste a lot of my stuff in ArchiCad from one project to the next.

Need to do some catchup with the great Eric Borrow and some of his wonderful tutorials.

[Patrick M]

some of the more complex tools (railings, stairs, curtain walls) have been developed as a one trick pony. Its a single tool that tries to cover most possible configurations. As such, it is tedious and tiresome to use these tools for anything you haven't already built favorites for.
I typically only use these tools when "good enough" is my goal, or when I have the time to dedicate to building them out for multiple future applications as favorites.

I almost always skip these tools all together and just use slabs, beams, columns roofs, meshes, morphs, etc.; unless it is something I know I have a favorite already built for. I think you probably could have built what you are describing with beams in 2-3 minutes, rather than using sketchup as a crutch.