As is typical, the big four CAD/BIM vendors all had the largest booths available in the software section of the show. These included Autodesk, Bentley, Graphisoft and Nemetschek Vectorworks. This year Autodesk’s booth was the same size as the others, where sometimes in the past it has twice as large. This may have been because many vendors said New Orleans last year was a big disappointment.

Getting Started

What we are going to do in this report series is run through the companies we have something to report about and post some show floor photos. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of waiting too long in the show to take photos and, as a consequence, the booths are not as busy as they were earlier in the show–a lost opportunity for us to comment visually about what many vendors were reporting was a better year than last year in New Orleans.

Graphisoft

We’ll start with Graphisoft. The Hungarian-based BIM leader was showing its brand new ArchiCAD 16 (which Architosh has a fairly large feature in the wings on) and especially touting its new Morph modeling tool and its EcoDesigner integration. The company was also showing BIMx, its iOS based BIM viewing tool. (see news report: BIMx gets updated for iPad’s Retina Display).

01 - Graphisoft was showing its new Morph Tool, the new direct-modeling technology offers architects powerful conceptual and final modeling capabilities beyond parametrics.

Autodesk

Autodesk was using a booth design we’ve seen a few times with its mini classroom setup directly on the aisle. (see image). The company had a good array of presentations for busy professionals to learn mostly about Revit and BIM process technology. Autodesk had just recently announced its 2013 products suites and so the company had no real new announcements at the AIA.

02 - Autodesk's booth was featuring various product demonstrations all day and as is typical was quite busy.

We did speak directly to Angi Izzi, Senior Industry Strategy Manager for Architecture at Autodesk who told us the company was showcasing its 2013 product suite for AEC and that there had been some additions made, such as adding Inventor to the Autodesk Building Design Suite Ultimate edition, which retails for 11.495.USD.

When we asked about Revit for the Mac Angi Izzi did admit it is the most asked about product customers seem interested in. Furthermore, the lead Revit product manager is now a Mac guy, she said, and Autodesk–from the inside–looks like a different company now. The presence of Macs and Apple gear is everywhere now. What was clearly communicated in response to the Mac question was that the company is very much focused on mobile and the cloud and taking Revit to the cloud is a higher priority. Does this mean the CAD giant will only provide a cloud-based version of Revit for Mac users? Angi Izzi wasn’t giving anything away to us. Right now the company is very focused on mobile and cloud trends.

Angi Izzi also noted that Autodesk customers are very interested in software services delivered to them on-demand from the cloud for things they may not want to purchase software suites on because they use them infrequently. One can think of cloud-based photorealistic rendering or energy calculations and verification for example.

Vectorworks Architect

The Nemetschek Vectorworks folks also had a busy booth and some excellent presentations in their booth theater space, including showcasing a brand new product named SimTread. The CADFaster folks were also showing CADFaster for Vectorworks at the show in the Vectorworks booth as well. (more on that later).

03 - The Vectorworks booth was showing the new SimTread app plus CADFaster for Vectorworks in addition to its flagship line of CAD/BIM software.

We had an in-depth conversation with Tuomas Holma of CADFaster, which is based in Finland, about the company, its products and the latest addition which is the support of Vectorworks. The company’s solutions work on desktop, iOS (iPhone and iPad) and on the web.

Currently CADFaster’s desktop solution–which is the most robust solution–is for Windows only but a Mac version is also planned. Tuomas Holma however could not comment on a time-line for that release. We have much more to say about CADFaster for Vectorworks so look for another report devoted just to that soon.

Unfortunately this year, due to so many requests from companies to speak to Architosh, including the AIA’s Documents software division, we didn’t get a chance to truly visit the Bentley booth. This marks the end of our BIM group for this first report on the show floor. Look for Report 2 for more pics and info.

The new iPad’s Retina Display offers stunning graphics with over 3.1 million pixels powered by Apple’s multicore A5 chip. This technology brings a whole new level of mobility to professional, high-end visualization.

01 - BIMx on iPad in this image. The "joystick" is a dot on the lower right of the iPad's screen. With one finger you move it up, down, left or right to navigate just like in a first-person shooter (FPS) video game.

Graphisoft is the first software company to bring this level of performance and hardware utilization to a software application in the iOS market to the AEC space. “It is worth noting that architects operate with true, detailed BIM models and not only simple, image-mapped surfaces,” said Gabor Horvath, Director of Mobile Developments at Graphisoft. “Our biggest challenge–and competitive edge–is the way we approach a great user experience through uncompromized performance in all our applications.”

BIMx allows architects to explore than project designs in a 3D environment that supports real-time 3D navigation identical to mainstream computer games. The update, version 1.2.455, is available for free through the App Store or iPad interface.

To learn more: www.graphisoft.com

ArchiCAD 16 introduces a comprehensive ecosystem of solutions which tie together Graphisoft’s various BIM software packages, addressing mobile as well as cloud solutions. The two largest new features of this release are ArchiCAD 16’s new Morph Tool modeling technology and Graphisoft’s introduction of BIMcomponents.com, a cloud-based repository of native ArchiCAD, GDL-based, BIM components.

“Building projects–by their nature–contain numerous custom building components and structures that may require modeling capabilities beyond the standard BIM tools,” said László Vértesi, VP of Products at Graphisoft. “ArchiCAD 16 introduces direct modeling capabilities and cloud-integration to help users create and find the custom objects, components, and structures they need to make their BIM models complete.”

Explicit Modeling

ArchiCAD has long been a BIM leader in parametric modeling capabilities within AEC but this release introduces the Morph Tool, bringing what is commonly referred to as “direct modeling” (or “explicit” modeling as compared to “parametric”) capabilities to its modeling powers.

01 - Graphisoft's new ArchiCAD 16. Introduces new Morph Tool for direct modeling and new BIMcomponents.com portal.

The new Morph Tool brings to ArchiCAD 16 popular modeling techniques such as Push/Pull and direct modeling transformations in an intuitive graphical way. The Morph Tool is an optimal solution for creating custom BIM components, custom structures, and custom elements of the built environment as well as custom-designed building interiors.

BIM Components in the Cloud

Building components is one of the most dynamically developing segments in the BIM industry and Graphisoft has addressed this trend with a user-friendly approach that encourages users–not just advanced scripting-capable third-party developers–to produce and share BIM components for the community of ArchiCAD users to tap into.

The new BIMcomponents.com website is a cloud-based community website hosting thousands of GDL-based BIM components. Users can create, search, upload and download custom BIM components of their choice. The fully-integrated web portal makes sharing and obtaining BIM components simple.

EcoDesign Becomes Integrated

Graphisoft is introducing in version 16 a fully integrated EcoDesigner. The built-in Energy Evaluation functionality of ArchiCAD 16 is similar to the former standalone EcoDesigner product but is based on entirely new technology (eg: zone-boundary based building model geometry analysis, analytic weather data input option, etc.). This technology allows architects to perform reliable dynamic energy evaluation of their BIM model within ArchiCAD relying on BIM geometry analysis and accurate hour-by-hour online weather data of the building’s location.

Together with ArchiCAD 16, GRAPHISOFT also delivers important workflow and productivity updates to its growing portfolio of solutions. These include an upgraded BIM Server™, Cloud-integrated model sharing service for BIMx users with an active maintenance contract, and support for the IFC 2×3 Coordination View Version 2.0 for facilitating OPEN BIM.

ArchiCAD 16 will be released on May 30, 2012, with shipment to customers beginning within a few weeks after the official release. Following a tight release schedule, all 26 local versions are planned to reach the market by the end of Q3 2012. For more information about ArchiCAD 16, please visit: http://www.graphisoft.com/archicad. For a live demonstration of ArchiCAD 16, please register for the upcoming “BIM Components at Your Fingertips” webinar on June 19, 2012.

At this present time BIM, or Building Information Modeling, continues to gain significant traction within the AEC industry at various paces worldwide. While it may have begun sooner in Europe for instance, than in North America, the latter region has leapt forward more aggressively. Additionally, in the North American market software giant Autodesk, with its popular Revit BIM platform, has established a notable mindshare presence with regard to the industry transformation to BIM. Within this context a group of proponents of “open” coordination workflows have begun to work harder at clarifying the advantages of what they refer to as a true “Open BIM” process…a process that allows the benefits of BIM without many of the classic limitations that can emerge around centralized file formatting.

Our discussion begins by talking about the importance of this movement.

Open BIM: Context and Importance

AFR (Anthony Frausto-Robledo): Akos, talk to me about the importance of this Open BIM movement.

AP (Akos Pfemeter): Sure. Firstly, the AEC industry has changed a lot in the past 20 or so years. In the last century AEC processes were mostly sequential, meaning that things came one after the other. Now, we are dealing with the forces of an accelerating economy that require AEC projects to finish faster also. This results in the traditional sequential order of things now to have substantial overlaps and even be fully parallel–happening at many times. (see image 01)

AFR: And how does this change the nature of collaboration in AEC?

AP: Back in the time of paper, design coordination meant that everyone would exchange paper drawings and use light tables to coordinate differences. Then 2D CAD came along and instead of light tables we overlaid Xref’d 2D CAD layers in much the same way to coordinate and discover important differences.

01 - BIM today is addressing the very nature of the transformation from traditional project delivery to "integrated" project delivery (IPD). Methodology changes are responding to "parallelization" of typical "sequential" processes of design, manufacturing and construction. BIM addresses these fundamentally but Open BIM as an approach is formulating the ideal workable solution for all parties involved.

But BIM (Building Information Modeling) fundamentally changes things including interdisciplinary coordination as well. In contrast to the 2D drawing primitives as the least common denominators of the traditional workflow, BIM carries an abundance of information that does not make sense to coordinate using the traditional approach.

AFR: But it seems there are some different views or approaches to how “coordination” or collaboration takes place within the BIM workflow. Can you define these?

next page: Approaches to BIM: The Open BIM Way

Architecture and design students and teachers are entitled to receive the fully-functional education version of ArchiCAD for free. Students and teachers are entitled to one year free education licenses of ArchiCAD after showing proof of their education status. In addition, architecture schools and academic institutions are entitled to equip their computer labs with the free academic version of ArchiCAD. Given that BIM is the fastest-growing trend in the AEC design industry, Graphisoft took the lead in developing the first, full-fledged BIM curriculum to support the university education of BIM to students. As a result, the number of universities taking advantage of this opportunity has grown as well. Since Graphisoft began offering free software to students, teachers, and universities through www.myarchicad.com, students are better-equiped to start their careers armed with the knowledge and practical skills they gain through the study of Building Information Modeling.

The Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM) is the leading school of architecture of the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) of Spain. It prepares future architects and grants the title of Architect, as well as doctorates and diverse master degrees. ETSAM is considered by many professionals of the sector as the best in Spain and one of the best architecture schools word-wide.

BIM for Small and New Firms

“We recognize the importance of BIM within the building and construction process, as well as the financial realities many new firms face. The release of STAR(T) 2012 represents our commitment to providing a powerful software solution to those customers,” said Steve Benford, managing director, Graphisoft North America. “ArchiCAD STAR(T) Edition 2012 is an excellent option to gain a BIM solution that meets their needs now and will meet their needs in the future as they grow.”

ArchiCAD STAR(T) 2012

ArchiCAD STAR(T) Edition 2012 is a full-fledged BIM solution with critical features most smaller practices need. Architects can take advantage of a full BIM toolset and create any type of “virtual building” model and architectural documentation (floor plans, sections/elevations, 3D views, details).

There are several new features in the STAR(T) Edition users will enjoy, including:

• Intelligent Element Connections — automatic connections between building structures and elements to help the creation and maintenance of the BIM model while preserving the flexibility architects need
• 3D Design Space — the new 3D guidelines and editing planes to help the creation of the BIM model in the natural 3D environment, including axonometric and perspective views
• Latest DWG-DXF file exchange capabilities with the 3rd party applications of consultants

ArchiCAD STAR(T) Edition 2012 will be shipping for less than 2000.USD. For more information visit www.graphisoft.com to find a reseller.

Architosh Analysis

ArchiCAD STAR(T) Edition is an interesting product that we feel fits the majority of needs of the small office or sole practitioner very well. And a firm outgrows those needs a company can upgrade to the full version of ArchiCAD. The STAR(T) Edition can read files created with earlier version of STAR(T) (2007 and newer) as well as ArchiCAD 8.1 and 9.0.

What is different about this version versus the full version of ArchiCAD is that STAR(T) Edition doesn’t support the Teamwork functionality found in ArchiCAD proper. There is no XRefs support or Hotlinked Modules support. Also, some of the sophisticated modeling is not supported, such as shells, curtain walls, slanted walls, columns and the profile manager is not present. There is also no LightWorks rendering engine built in or Sketch Rendering. And finally there is no NET license or license borrowing. When it comes to documentation there are no limitations or differences between this product and ArchiCAD 15.

For those who have been interested in ArchiCAD but concerned about price STAR(T) offers them an alternative road map to migrating to a BIM practice.

Rift Architects applied OPEN BIM collaboration workflow to design and build a high-end residential complex in the heart of Oslo fjord, 40 minutes outside of Oslo, Norway. The residential project offers residents an enviable way of life, with islands, reefs, sandy beaches and fishing all within arm’s reach.

01 - Graphisoft to host OPEN BIM webinar featuring this project in Norway. (image courtesy of Graphisoft, copyright by Rift Architects)

Webinar Details

In attending this webinar you can learn about:

• How OPEN BIM’s safe and streamlined workflow ensures seamless collaboration between architects and engineers using products like Graphisoft ArchiCAD, Tekla Structures, and DDS-CAD MEP.
• Learn how OPEN BIM projects are more easily shared among architects, engineers, builders and clients
• See how Rift Architect’s use of OPEN BIM saved the client time and money on the Norde Jarsberg Brygge project

Registration

The live webinar is on 27 March 2012, Tuesday. To register for different locales around the world you can visit this information page here. There is a Spanish-language version for this event as well. To register to here.

To learn more about Graphisoft visit this page.

Self-sufficient City

Designed using ArchiCAD, the Skyscraper Village is based on the design and research of a city that supplies its own food. The building would function as a self-sufficient city, and would also consist of parks, open-areas, dwellings, offices and industrial areas.

01 - Skyscraper City, an award-winning project was done on ArchiCAD.

The project consists of four towers interlinked to one another. The goal of the project was to create the feeling of being in a city. For example, Brendan designed multiple routes to get from one place in the building to another, just as one might take different routes to the same destination in a city.

A native of Voorschoten, now living in Utrecht, the Netherlands, Brendan Bakker studied engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht, specializing in architecture and the built environment. He is currently working on his master’s degree in architecture at the Technical University of Delft, which he expects to complete in 2013.

To learn more about ArchiCAD visit Graphisoft’s website here.

Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD 15 won Construction Computing Magazine’s BIM Product of the Year in 2011 and now the company has released a white paper titled, “Get There Faster with ArchiCAD.” The white paper examines five critical areas to explore before making final BIM software selection. The sole purpose of the white paper is to provide accurate, reliable information about critical issues related to BIM and how ArchiCAD technology addresses these issues.

The key issue areas are:

• Improve profitability
• Enable agile and competitive workflow
• Provide real-time collaboration
• Easy-to-learn and simplfied 3D workflow
• Optimizes use of computer hardware power
• Keeps IT costs low
• Is a secure and proven BIM product

The white paper shares expertise from six design leaders. The company says, “we want to teach and educate in an effort to help architects make informed technology decisions.”

You can download the BIM white-paper here.

The new book provides solutions for setting up projects through the phases of Planning, Tender, Construction, Interiors and As-Built drawings. It is based on ArchiCAD 14 but can be adapted to suit older versions of the software as well.

Vaneshrie Sullivan has sold and trained ArchiCAD in the sub-saharan region of South Africa almost ten years ago and worked in interior design and architecture practices using ArchiCAD both in South Africa and the United Kingdom, as well as training architects in those countries as well as the US, Italy, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Kuwait and India.

01 - New ArchiCAD interactive training book by Sullivan.

The book sells for 195 British Pounds and can be ordered here. You can also preview the table of contents on this site.

The new ArchiCAD STAR(T) Edition 2012 is based on the robust BIM technology of ArchiCAD 15, but with a feature set and price tailored to the needs of small architectural practices, home builders, and building contractors.

ArchiCAD STAR(T) Edition 2012 is a full-featured BIM program, containing all the tools necessary to creating a building information model of your design and then documenting the project fully as well as generating a list of materials. The latest release features the core functionality of ArchiCAD 15 plus:

• Intelligent Element Connections – automatic connections between building structures and elements to help create the creation and maintenance of the BIM model while preserving the flexibility architects need
• 3D Design Space – 3D guidelines and editing planes to help the creation of the BIM model in the natural 3D environment including axonometric and perspective views
• Latest DWG-DXF file exchange capabilities with the 3rd party applications of consultants

ArchiCAD STAR(T) Edition 2012 is available in International English, German and Austrian versions. Other localized versions will follow during Q1, 2012. To learn more visit them online here.

Crafted by Hungarian sculptor Erno Toth, the life-like bronze statue stands near the entrance of architectural software maker Graphisoft’s Budapest headquarters building.

The relationship between Graphisoft and Apple can be traced to the 1980’s, when Jobs came across the first version of Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD software running on an Apple Lisa computer at the 1984 CeBIT show in Germany. His first impression of the software led him to throw Apple’s support behind the development and distribution of ArchiCAD.

01 - State of Steve Jobs dedicated and placed in Graphisoft Park in Budapest, Hungary.

“With its attention to excellence in every detail, Graphisoft Park’s environment embodies the spirit of Steve Jobs,” said Viktor Varkonyi, CEO of Graphisoft. “I can’t think of a better place to commemorate the man and his legacy.”

A webpage dedicated to the planned event states: “Graphisoft considers Steve Jobs the greatest hero of the information age. We believe such superlatives are warranted: indeed, we cannot be entirely objective with respect to Steve Jobs, because to a large extent, Graphisoft ArchiCAD owes its global success to him. In 1984, Apple was willing to give Graphisoft a chance.”

BIM Begins on Apple Lisa

ArchiCAD is largely considered the very first true BIM (Building Information Modeling) software program, inventing and coining the term “virtual building” in the process of developing 3D CAD for architects which enabled them to literally build the building, completely, in 3D on the computer. “The first version of ArchiCAD ran on a Lisa computer, the immediate predecessor to the Macintosh,” reports the company. “We exhibited this program at the 1984 CEBIT in Hannover, where Steve Jobs saw it and decided to give Apple’s full support to its development and distribution. Apple gave us cash and computers at a time when Graphisoft was a young company with very limited resources; the technology represented by those computers was not even available in our part of the world.”

01 - Ark-Coca-Cola skyscraper wins fifth design excellence award. The project is a BIM achievement in Australia and was designed using Graphisoft ArchiCAD.

ArchiCAD quickly became available on the Mac and remained an exclusive on the Mac well into the 1990’s. Apple introduced the young Hungarian company to its global distribution network, which the company relies on to this day, helping sell and represent ArchiCAD in countries around the world.

“In 1985, after Steve Jobs left Apple, the company lost its soul,” states Graphisoft on this webpage. “At the time, many of our partners said that Graphisoft was the guardian of Apple’s spirit and soul. Some even said that we were the ‘real Apple’ at that time. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple 12 years later, the company again began to create miracles.”

“The working environment at Graphisoft Park embodies the spirit of Steve Jobs, which strives for excellence in every detail. Our built environment aims to inspire and promote this passion for quality in the talented people who work here. Graphisoft Park is indeed a fitting location for a statue commemorating Steve Jobs and his legacy.”

To learn more about Graphisoft’s thoughts on Steve Jobs and its view on Apple and the Graphisoft connection, click here. The event takes place in front of the Graphisoft building, 1031 Budapest, Zahony u, 7, G Building, at 3:00PM CET.

Those who wish to attend can RSVP by contacting Julianna Gulden, Graphisoft PR at: jgulden@graphisoft.com

Graphisoft also took home the award for Environmental Project of the Year for Rural Regeneration Centre at Hadlow College, the UK’s first certified Passivhaus educational building.

To learn more about Graphisoft’s BIM solution ArchiCAD 15 go here.

NCME and Graphisoft agree to establish a NCME-Graphisoft Strategic Partnership with objective to promote and implement Building Information Modeling (BIM) to strengthen the design capabilities of NCME, the brand and influence of NCME, to support the growth of BIM in China and the creation of specifications for municipal design, as well as BIM standards for China based upon Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD and related software.

North China Municipal Engineering Design & Research Institute (NCME) is a nationally recognized, professional organization. A design and research organization integrating urban planning, cost consulting, environmental assessment, project design, contract engineering, project supervision, research and technology development.

During the course of the next three years, Graphisoft will assist NCME with implementing BIM on design, collaboration, sustainability, and create BIM specifications.

To learn more about ArchiCAD visit them online here: www.graphisoft.com

Architosh Analysis

Graphisoft continues to make substantial progress in China with several related agreements like this one in the past few years. Recently Architosh reported on Graphisoft’s team-up with United Design Group of Shanghai, China. And just this early Fall the BIM innovator signed a MOU with China Academy of Building Research Architecture Design Institute.

With China’s recent construction boom BIM is exploding in the growing country. Large-scale agreements like this one can form a very positive momentum for the BIM innovator, growing its market share and attraction in one of the largest markets in the world.

The event takes place globally on December 1, 2011, Thursday. Here are some times:

• Sydney Time – 4:00pm AEDT (register)
• London Time – 2:00pm GMT (register)
• Paris Time – 1:00pm CET (register)
• Moscow Time – 4:00pm MSK (register)
• Los Angeles Time – 9:00am PST (register)

A Spanish-language event on December 1 is also available here:

• Madrid Time – 4:00pm CET (register)

With the recent construction boom in China, BIM has been in great demand within the Chinese market. Graphisoft has been aggressive in China and has made several high-profile announcements in recent months.

Together, the companies will focus on collaborative efforts to promote integration, research and application of Graphisoft BIM solution on UDG’s projects. This process itself will deepen the application of BIM in China and will lead to the further development of the architectural design and construction industries.

This is something that Graphisoft and the UDG are very excited about. For more on UDG

To learn more about GRAPHISOFT and BIM technologies.

Liverpool embraced BIM as a means to plan, administer and control processes used in the construction, expansion, and modification of its stores. After considering ArchiCAD and another BIM solution, Liverpool chose ArchiCAD as the BIM solution best-suited to meet its growing needs. Liverpool’s Store Planning Team, represented by Martin A. Perez, Fernando Parrillat and Carlos Jimenez, pointed out several areas where ArchiCAD surpasses its best rival.

“ArchiCAD allows the management of large files without the need for major hardware and infrastructure,” the team said. “Furthermore, ArchiCAD’s Teamwork function makes collaboration on even overseas projects easier to manage.” The team also chose ArchiCAD due to the strength of the technical support back in Hungary and its Spanish offices in Europe, in addition to its Mexico representative. “No other company dedicated to BIM even comes close to Graphisoft in Mexico,” they said.

To learn more about ArchiCAD and Graphisoft’s BIM solutions visit them online here.

What We Think

It is becoming increasingly common for large retail businesses to implement their own BIM standards. This is just a natural evolution of those same companies’ CAD standards. Many architects may wonder how such large corporate clients and their technology standards work in conjunction with independent architects serving these same clients. Often in the past CAD standards by such clients could impede on architect selection and working methods and the sharing of data. But BIM promises by its very nature a more flexible approach to these same challenges. ArchiCAD’s strong IFC and Open BIM standards orientation makes it a very flexible solution. It was noteworthy to hear the Liverpool team mention overseas support, something Graphisoft is very strong in with its best-in-class BIM Server.

To recap this announcement, Graphisoft has announced a new mobile application for Apple’s iPad and iPhone for viewing BIM models using a powerful but easy to navigate user interface, fully controllable with Apple’s Multi-touch gesture technology. Additionally, the company announced a new website with deep Facebook and cloud storage integration.

Graphisoft BIMx – Beginnings

One of the more ironic developments since Apple developed the iPad is that its two largest Mac CAD developers, sister companies Graphisoft and Nemetschek Vectorworks, were apparently late to the iOS development game. But late is a relative term in this specific sense and is measured against their rival Autodesk, which developed an iOS version of AutoCAD at the same time it introduced AutoCAD back on the Mac.

For Graphisoft the decision to development an application for the iOS platform was never a question in itself but rather a series of questions about how to do it specific to the needs of its ArchiCAD users utilizing BIM (Building Information Modeling) around the world.

“As you know Anthony we have had Virtual Building Explorer around for a few years now,” said Akos Pfemeter, Director of Global Marketing, Graphisoft, “and it is a self-running environment enabling anybody to explore a full BIM model anywhere on any desktop.” “It works like a first person shooter game…easy and simple navigation.”

01 - Graphisoft's new BIMx application for Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod touch offers a visually stunning and responsive way to explore BIM models saved in the .bimx file format.

What Graphisoft has done with its BIMx application is essentially port over that code base to Apple’s iOS platform and optimize it for a touch-based user interface. It has also been tuned for performance, making it a very powerful complex BIM model viewer or, in another sense, a powerful 3D model viewer on iOS.

“The Apple iPad is very impressive,” said Tibor Szolnoki, “it is very capable of pushing around quite big models.”

Graphisoft BIMx – Details

Graphisoft’s BIMx application for iPad and iPhone is based on the same code base as its Virtual Building Explorer for the desktop. That application was originally developed in Sweden and acquired by Graphisoft for integration into ArchiCAD in 2010. BIMx is actually a suite of three applications. A desktop (BIMx) application is available for Windows and OS X which enables you to publish BIMx models from within ArchiCAD. And there is the BIMx desktop viewer application, for Windows and OS X, which can be freely downloaded to view BIMx models. Finally, there is BIMx for iOS, a free app that can be downloaded from the Apple App Store after September 20, 2011.

BIMx for iOS is compatible with iPad (1 and 2), iPhone (3GS or 4) and iPod touch 4th generation. Most users will enjoy this application on an iPad the most.

02 - BIMx on iPad in this image. The "joystick" is a dot on the lower right of the iPad's screen. With one finger you move it up, down, left or right to navigate just like in a first-person shooter (FPS) video game.

03 - BIMx has a simple and efficient user-interface with standard iOS options like drop-down menus. In this view the user has rendering setting options. In future versions features will expand.

Graphisoft created BIMx for iOS to extend BIM further noting that many users are now carrying iPads around as their primary mobility computing device. Akos Pfemeter noted that not all of the features on the desktop version of BIMx viewer are on the iOS version of it. But as both applications advance those features should emerge as one unified set relative to each platform’s capabilities.

Today you cannot turn on and off layers with BIMx for iOS. Data extraction from model elements is not yet supported. Some features on BIMx for iOS are unique to that platform. For example, based on the touch interface, double tap on any point in the model and the BIMx app will fly you there. Also there is an icon that appears on doors and a click on it will take you through the door.

next page: Graphisoft BIMx on iPad

GRAPHISOFT VP of Product Development Miklos Szovenyi-Lux and President of CABR-ADI Ma Lidong signed the Memorandum setting out the terms of the strategic partnership. The parties have agreed to cooperate to promote the application of GRAPHISOFT’s, ArchiCAD, and lead the development of China’s architectural design and construction industry. The building will be the largest comprehensive research and development institute in China’s building industry. The CABR is also responsible for developing building standards and requirements for China. During the course of the next three years, GRAPHISOFT will help CABR-ADI in transferring their design workflow and platform from 2D to BIM-based GRAPHISOFT products and the relevant BIM technology

Mr. Ma Lidong, President of CABR-ADI said, “We must maintain our leadership and competitive edge through the application of BIM technology. That’s our task in the 12th National 5 year plan. ArchiCAD can definitely help us cover all disciplines and the entire process from design to construction, collaborate flexibly and remotely — even globally – and achieve outstanding performance for complex projects.”

According to GRAPHISOFT VP of Product Development Miklos Szovenyi-Lux, “GRAPHISOFT will directly support CABR-ADI to apply for ArchiCAD and related products, and undertake specific custom and localization according to CABR’s requirements. Our goal is to help CABR improve productivity and collaboration, and help the China building industry benefit from BIM technology!”

To learn more about GRAPHISOFT’s ArchiCAD and BIM technologies visit them online.