you're right, most programs can generally do what you need them to do, but you're also right in the fact that certain ones do certain things much better than others. for simple things like the b pavillion, you could model it in any program (acad, vectorworks, archicad, max, viz, rhino, sketchup) and pretty much arrive at the same place.
rendering and environmental effects are a whole other story.

It really is a matter of preference, knowlege of the software and modeling skill. For organic modeling, you can model anything using subdivision surfaces (SubD or meshsmooth modeling - NURMS) that you can with NURBS.
I agree with Pacific that you can model both examples you gave with relative ease (Gothic Cathedral and the Barcelona Pavilion) using any of the programs he mentioned.
If you were going to use 3dsmax/viz to render the model though, I think it would be best to stick to Autodesk software for modeling because you could come across some difficulty with tesselation and file conversion etc. when importing other file formats into Max/Viz.
There are also some 3dsmax plugins from NPower software that you could look into: http://www.npowersoftware.com/products.html

Thanks for the input pacific and remonio.

on the same thread...i heard that there is a rendering plug in for rhino that makes rather better renderings than the native one, does anyone know the name of this thing?

I think alot of students take to rhino because it's a fairly easy jump to 3d from 2d acad skills. To many people, rhino's interface is what acad's 3d tools SHOULD be like.

there are a few rendering plugins for rhino. flamingo is popular, rhinoman has some supporters, there are also brazil and maxwell render plugins in beta development (both of which I think surpass or will surpass flamingo by a long shot), though word of warning, maxwell render requires a different approach to rendering technique, and not everybody likes it.

brazil and maxwell also have texturing limitations at the moment, which probably won't be improved on until rhino v4

i was wondering, do you guys convert all surfaces in Rhino into meshes before exporting to Max? does this make the move from rhino to max smoother/more accurate?

Is it worth downloading Brazil plug-in for Rhino?
How does Brazil compare with built-in 3DS Max rendering?

brazil is much better than the standard scanline renderer. I still find that Mental Ray with Final Gather produces some nice renderings after using some Logarythmic exposure controls.

Check Final Render as well - great GI

hey John,

How about Brazil versus 3DS Max radiosity rendering?

.dwg - you can move a file from rhino to max and maintain NURBS geometry, however it is a bit tricky and to the best of my knowledge requires a third party app (right hemisphere's deep exploration). If you're intent on meshing, I'd recomend doing an operation that joins all the adjacent coplanar faces of the meshed model (formz is really good at doing this on .3ds import, I believe max has a similar tool that is a bit clunkier)

nappy: brazil for rhino is still in development, and isn't totally useful yet, mainly due to the texturing limitations in rhino's SDK (which will be improved in V4). The last beta I got a chance to play with was looking really nice, and was able to produce some nice (though texture - absent) renderings very speedily - it's good for fairly diagramatic stuff that needs to be done fast.

Radiosity is dated and ill-equipped. Brazil is much more accurate.

Again, Final Render is amazing

or just Mental ray with Final Gather enabled

*Max by the way

sorry. I know this is not the right thread, but I am curious:

Does anyone know of a mIRC channel that specifically "facilitates" the software we use?

Having always depended on Bittorrent, and upgraded... I now find myself with a 7 version of max, and no Vray or Brazil. (had both for 6).

bump

John, have you used Final Render Stage 0 with Max? It's only $95 at this point. I was just wondering what its limitations might be.