A few years ago a certain European company was sailing along quite well with a good product line, rising to market leaders in their field. Their main competition, an American firm, looked like they had 'dropped the ball and missed the boat'.
More recently the American company leap frogged the competition by taking a high risk, high payoff strategy and investing in revolutionary technologies. Scrambling to match them, the Europeans revealed a derivative approach – the marketplace however is consistently telling them it isn’t good enough. The tables have turned rather quickly and now we see a huge swing in market share back to the Americans. (Obviously the jury is still out on how things will develop, and this is a gross over simplification of a complex story, nevertheless....).
For those of you interested in aviation, you might think of Boeing’s “all new” 787 and Airbus’s response in the A350.
This being an ArchiCAD forum, you might be thinking of Graphisoft and its competitors. It is a broad analogy but there are disconcerting parallels.
I’m not going into a nit-picking comparison, suffice to say, I hope Graphisoft has some forward thinking gurus who are projecting into the future the development of the company software. Having used ArchiCAD over 10 years I am very sceptical of any marketing speak, and as a long-time user I am very concerned to see how/ whether there is real product development that will set the company up well for the future.
A few (immediate) core issues off the top of my head are:
1
Overhaul the modelling engine to allow for accurate 3D curved surfaces. I’ve written on this before and I see this as a huge limitation even now – currently ArchiCAD’s sections and elevations are facetted approximations of ‘real’ curved objects. As a documentation tool this has been a significant limitation to me.
2
Multi-threading; Enable use of multiple processors and also the ability to have a number of live processes/palettes etc.
3
True integration of 3D modelling tools. These could be new and sophisticated – Sketchup has surprised many with simple and clever tools like “push-pull”…
4
Decent implementation and integration of quality rendering software. Unlike the original 'internal renderer' in ArchiCAD, GS is not coding the rendering software, so the interface with ArchiCAD is what is at stake – sadly Lightworks has proven to be crippled by incorporating an old release and very poor user interface. Ever tried editing materials? Life should not be so hard.
5
Proper automated tracking of drawing issues/revisions.
etc etc
As I write this I realise the sad part is that the competition is there already in many ways….
Current product releases and new products reveal a lot; are you concerned with current trends?
1
‘New’ GS change comparison/ tracking software (unbelievably based around DWG format!). ArchiCAD could do with this thinking (refer previous point 5).
2
Constructor – a reworked ArchiCAD for estimating – surely these two should be far more similar – i.e. shouldn’t such be easily produced in ArchiCAD? Is this new product or just extending potential audience (I’d be interested to know how it is really going).
3
v.10 boasting a features similar to (other) software, raising the question, “Who is innovating?”
Comments?
Thoughts?
The proof will be in the pudding due sometime soon....