I used ArchiCAD for a few years and loved it. In my opinion it's the best of the several CAD applications I've used in various firms. But unfortunately it is too expensive to use now in my own firm. This is what I always tell the ArchiCAD rep who calls to bug me every so often.

There will be demostration for ArchiCad at the Apple Store on June 2. Plus a chance to win the program!

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Jun 2
Learn how to harness the Power Mac G5, Mac OS X and ArchiCAD from Graphisoft in your architectural design workflow. You’ll see live demonstrations of ArchiCAD on a Power Mac G5 and hear about how other architectural firms are using these powerful tools to increase their creativity, productivity and profitability. All attendees will be eligible to participate in a drawing to win a free copy of ArchiCAD, valued at approximately $4000*.

I use it mostly. The interface is decent and producing "normal architecture" is easy and fast. But for anything less vertically orthogonal I find it quite limiting.

Has any Archicad user tried this new Autodesk Revit - is it perhaps more flexible in "3d mode"? Would it be big step to switch?

I have used ArchiCAD for a long time - from university to 3 work places. When compared to Autocad or Microstation, I've found it a much better all-round program. 'skikkare' is right that it can feel limited in 3d with surfaces that are curved in 2 directions. But i believe this is a 'feeling' rather than a real limitation.

It's possible to make any form in ArchiCAD - even those curved in many directions. But: you'd have to be familiar with the GDL modeling language that ArchiCAD uses for its library parts, and create the shapes in the sub-application that is used for creating new library parts. I don't think it's generally worth the trouble - unless you want to create a parametric object that you could change repeatedly through a dialog box.
I always just got around that whole issue by creating more complicated parts in FormZ and bringing them into archiCAD.
I don't like Revit much at all, and find it actually less flexible for 3D.

I used Revit and ArchiCAD. Revit, by beginning of this year had major glitches, poor library, and primitive teamwork. I used ArchiCAD to figure out some geometries and project it back to AutoCAD. It has great translation to AutoCAD, something undesirable to do in Revit since you end up losing few lines here and there.
Any experts in ArchiCAD in NY looking for work?

I am using archicad from 3 years now. I think it is the best architectural software on the market. But yes is much too expensive to buy for a little office. Anyway i am not from NY but searching for job.
Cheers!

i've used archicad now for 3 years. we have 8 licenses on Macs...mostly G4 dualP, 1Gig ram+...yes it is expensive...especially when the cost for an update is prohibitive...most people i know that work on the program are still using v7 while v8.1 is more user friendly and faster. its easy to get a working set of drawings quickly using the plotmaker interface.

our firm does a lot of project phasing and master planning. archicad makes that pretty easy as we can have 3D information for the client within a week without a major hassle. we have also experimented with sketch up at this phase of the project. the client understands this information and when you draw in archicad, its there...in 3d, correctly...if you do it right. also, since the modeling functions of the program carry over to the 2d, you have to be very specific in terms of layer combos because otherwise, the plan becomes muddled and you end up having to nearly redraw the project in 2d by the time you're into CDs. right now, my 10K s.f. church project only has 3D plans...everything else is lines and fills.

overall, i like the program. i have not tried the new autodesk products but i hear that they're moving toward the 'library object drag and drop' that archicad uses.

that said...the program is finicky...it crashes, and teamwork on large projects is a pain in the kiester. you get real tired of the computer taking 18 minutes to open the file, another 10 minutes to acquire the teamwork attributes you need then have it crash completely or crash your cpu 15 minutes later. 8.1 is better but i have a catastrophic crash like this with complete restart every other day on average.

yeah, i've been wondering if there is some sort of bug in 8.1 because archicad has been freaking out when we've been teamworking. we aren't upgrading to 9 because it is so expensive, and half of our office in another town still haven't started using 8.

i like archicad a lot. i fear the day that i look for a new job and have to go back to autodesk.

The office I work in has ArchiCAD and I will never do any pure 2d drafting again, I consider it a supreme waste of time and resources.

Anyone else here use Artlantis [rendering package] also ?

Also, I heard that 8.0 is buggy because it was not extensivley beta tested, thus the quick release of 8.1; this is unlike what Graphisoft are claiming about 9.0.

Anyway, who here ever sends off a bug report when ArchiCAD spits it at you ? I can never be bothered ... and why oh why does it read "Welcome to Graphisoft Bug Reporter" - it just shits me even more, why should I feel welcome when I've potentially lost hours of work ?

sjk, we use artlantis, but mostly for still images. any movies in artlantis tend to be very time consuming to create. Also, texture maps in Artlantis have a tendency to 'flicker' when you move around them in a 'flythrough'.

We do use it with success in still images, though. The lighting is fairly intense, however. We've found that the "neon" aspect of many of the materials is too harsh and we've hand to layer some materials with differeing opacities in order to achieve realistic looking images.

Overall, i have found Artlantis to have a very shallow learning curve and you can produce output very quickly once you get the hang of it. I also enjoy how the newer versions of artlantis allows you to copy in newly altered objects/walls/etc into your artlantis model...this means you don't have to start from scratch if you have made some minor changes to the ArchiCAD model itself...great time saver.

I started with ArchiCAD this year after downsizing my practice to me. The learning curve was deep and sometimes excruciating (I'm of the hand-drawn generation). I produced a small retail building first shot out. The results were fabulous! Spent the time to get the model right and the CD's produced themselves. No booboos and there were ZERO RFI's from the contractor.

The Owner made a big design change when I was almost done. It took 4 hours to update the model. one day to amend the CD's, One day to update PlotMaker and I charged him the whole cost of the program - thus payiong for itself and my learning curve on the first project.

I'm now working on a 10,000 SF house for which I did the schematics a year ago by hand. It took a week to get it into the box. Being able to show the client his house in a fly-thru (even with no rendering) is a miracle.

I'm doing the work of 3 people and am loving the fact that I am once again being an architect. It puts the fun back into the process. Any firm who is not investing in this technology is loosing money.

AutoCRAP is for drafters. ArchiCAD ROCKS!

yeah autocrap(CAD) is for drafters,
what about formZ, seems like i keep hearing about FormZ
has any one tried it and liked it?

I just cant see any advantage of archicad over autodesk autocad. Its slow, its incompatible with half of my consultants, and its no good drafting, the bulk of what we are paid to produce. Yes, its ok for the shematic phase of a project but thats about it. As far as being a parametric modeling program, its more intuitive than desktop but alas - has parametric modeling really proven to be efficient? I've seen a couple large firms in Chicago drop their 3 year experiments with parametric modeling to go back to cad out of the box - because its the fatest still. At least it generates door schedules quickly, but after waitng 20 min. for each files to open and the endless hours waiting for the gay mac wheel to stop spinning, all gains gone. Archi-bad.

none of our consultants use archiCAD, and we dont have many problems.
what do you mean by "no good drafting"?
does archiCAD not run as well with the mac operating system?

Parametric modeling is not any faster than 2d drafting. The difference is where you spend the time. You don't have to do the mind numbing coordination like check section cut numbers and callout refs sheet to sheet. It's not perfect, but if you think it offers nothing above traditional cad, you've completely missed the point.

I agree Frit - But firt its been a nightmare cordinating an office, Parametric modeling only worked in small 2 man teams for us. We couldnt generate any sections we were proud of because the drawings just didnt look right even if the elevations of components were correct. The only features we use are the tags and parametric doors, windows etc. We still do the curtain walls as lines. It just didnt look as profesional as drawing with lines - and some of us do that extremely fast and accurate.

evilplatypus,

Were you using Archicad or another package? I've never used Archicad myself, but I've used ADT and Revit. What you say is correct. The companies get you believing that sections and elevations require no additional work, they just get generated *poof* and you're done. They are actually just a starting point to build on, but it saves me the time of composing the base drawing, and coordinating it throughout the project. It took some adjustment and we had several people early on that absolutly hated it, but after about a month most said they wouldn't want to go back to 2d drafting.