I use ArchiCAD 9 and ArtLantis 4.5 on my MAC

I use VW for 2d, form Z and Cin4d... Then I composit in AE pro

I'm not a mac user, so I can't verify this from experience, but a friend of mine has been successfully running Rhino via VirtualPC on a mac. Rhino, in my opinion, is the best and easiest modelling program, and if you're going to render in C4D anyhow, it might be worth the slight hassle of using VirtualPC.

Anybody else tried this?

never tried rhino on a mac...
i think the first batch would give you a lot more freedom, specially in 3d, but it's probably less indicated if you have a large office.

archicad, when use to use it in an office environment, used to suck enormous dicks, it might have got better with the time, but i like vw a lot, and i hear good things of form z.

actually, how does form z compare to c4d? i always hated the modifiers in c4d, it makes everything very complicated...

Both Nemetschek (Vectorworks) and Maxon (Cinema4D) have the same parent company, so expect more interoperability from them. Maxon has a set of plugins that allows VW and C4D to play nice which each other.

They also have some plugins for Archicad

I still use formZ a lot, but with each new release I get more and more frustrated because they add features I think are worthless (oohhh doodle render!) and neglect the things that are important, but aren't sexy to the marketing department (i.e. the interface, which still looks and behaves like OS9)

I've used Rhino in VPC for limited things (primarily the contour tool to get sections of Maya models) and it seems to run OK. Can't say whether doing any serious modeling would be worthwhile.

Rhino on VPC is horrible for large models. I use Form z 5 to model some pretty large files [30mb] - including symbols and all smooth objects. Granted you can make some of the objects more facetted, but why bother if you have the juice.

The interchange plugins work well between VW and Cin4d and the AE plugins are insane. full 3d composits loaded into AE makes rendering times much easier to cope with.

I personally like the new Physical sky feature in cin4d 9.5 it makes the renderings look more like the Sky System in 3ds 7.

Now if final render stage 2 would drop for cin4d i'd be a happy camper.

ArchiCAD isn't a bad program. It streamlines a lot of things that architects do a lot of. If, however, you want to do a nurbsy-spliny building, it's going to be a bit of a fight.

I use VW & Maya on MAC...others in the office use formz & C4D.

I use FormZ (cause I can get a student lease through the university for it for 100 dollars a year), and Power Cad, it's cheeper then ArchiCAD and in some ways better. It's really good with curves and such. I havent had it longs o ido n't know all the ins and outs yet though.