It has been one year since we last published a review of ArchiCAD…with version 11 and its new “virtual trace” technology. We started that review by noting that version 11’s strongest new features may have had more to do with 2D technology and 2D-based practice methods than with BIM technology. With version 12 Graphisoft has turned its attention back to BIM itself — with a particular emphasis on core technologies essential to making BIM even more powerful for architectural practitioners.
2008 may turn out to be a watershed year for advanced industrial societies due to the collision of two major forces: the near total collapse of global financial markets and the rapid uptake in interest in alternative and renewable sources of energy. Both play into the adoption and interest in BIM for several reasons. Most notably BIM, unlike CAD, enables a better understanding (vis-a-vis analytical software tools) of building energy use and capture much earlier on in the design process.
And in this time of marked “economic downturn” architecture firms, according to a recent AIA Economics report, are stepping back and looking for ways to optimize workflow and gain new efficiencies. Into this picture fits BIM (building information modeling) and with that ArchiCAD 12. Let’s take a look.
ArchiCAD 12
With ArchiCAD 12 Graphisoft — which is now apart of the German Nemetschek Group — has done major work on a new underlying “systems technology” as well as optimized their code base for today’s multi-core processors from Intel and AMD. ArchiCAD 12 is the world’s first multi-threaded BIM application. The Hungarian developer also has addressed a broad range of BIM functionalities with a series of engaging new features and functional improvements.
So what’s new…?
First and foremost is the new Curtain Wall tool, based on the new systems technology mentioned earlier. Because this technology underlies significant future changes to ArchiCAD this will be our main focus in this review. However, there are several other important new features that warrant attention. First and foremost is the new Partial Structure Display and the related new feature 3D Document capability. Both of these make dramatic improvements to the core program.
Secondly, Graphisoft has dramatically improved the StairMarker tool and the Hotlink Module. Finally there are several smaller improvements of which we will briefly touch on near the end of the review.
A New System – Curtain Wall Tool
By far the biggest new feature in ArchiCAD 12 is the new Curtain Wall tool, which Graphisoft has told me is based on new “systems technology.” Developed internally Graphisoft’s new systems technology differs from its intelligent objects technology behind things like doors, windows, and stairs.
The main distinction visible to the end user is that Curtain Walls — based on the new systems technology — can be edited at the “component member” level without dissembling the whole system or element. Also unique is that when you edit Curtain Walls at this level you do so within a dedicated 3D work environment complete with its own tools specific to the purpose of editing curtain walls. This is entirely different than the way in which you edit other building objects within ArchiCAD and it is a welcome change. (see image 01).
01 – ArchiCAD 12’s new 3D Edit Curtain Wall Environment.
A key defining aspect of this new “systems technology” is that in the case of the new Curtain Wall tool there is introduced a new schema or set of “constructs” for understanding how the curtain walls you create are actually made and controlled by the program. These constructs include things like “reference line”, “reference plane”, “grid” and “base plane” and other constructs more closely aligned to real-world components like “panel” and “frame.” We are not going to talk about these specifically in this review but it bears mentioning that we hope Graphisoft can implement its systems technology going forward with a directness and simplicity consistent with the best aspects of the program.
Working with Curtain Walls
Working with the new Curtain Wall tool is fairly straight forward. You open up the default Curtain Wall settings palette and define basic parameters of the curtain wall, much like you do other building components (eg: Windows, Doors). Positioning is the first parameter group and one must master the Offset to “Reference Surface” settings to get intended results. By all appearances the Reference Surface (designated by a series of small opposing arrows and gray zone) wants to always be on the interior side of the curtain wall but we’d like to see an option to have it live on the exterior side to make it easier to place polyline “chained” curtain walls along the slab edge of a building. (see images 02 – 03)
02 – Reference Surface Set to Zero Offset (Interior Side of Mullion)
03 – Reference Surface Offset set to its limit.
With the new Curtain Wall tool in ArchiCAD 12 you can create several different types of curtain wall situations. Firstly, you can create straight curtain walls (the type of walls utilized in the Microsoft campus building featured in Graphisoft’s “ArchiCAD Essentials” voice-led QuickTime animated interactive training materials. This is a part of its free BIM Learning Studio.
You can also create curved curtain walls (placed in plan or placed like skylight roof systems in section/elevation view). And you can create slanted curtain walls, but only in single line method. A powerful feature of the new Curtain Wall tool is the ability to create very long “chained” curtain walls by defining an input polyline. This method creates neat and realistic curtain wall corner mullions at appropriate angles. (more on glass corners later).
The real magic in the new Curtain Wall tool really takes place within the new 3D editing environment. For this part of the review we will show you this in action in QuickTime movies and several screen shots.
04 – Editing Menu for isolated 3D Curtain Wall editing window.
When you select a curtain wall in plan, section, elevation or 3D mode the curtain wall highlights normally like any other object in ArchiCAD; however, unlike other elements you get an extra option to click on a new “Edit” button. Clicking on this edit button highlights the curtain wall and depresses the visualization of the rest of the building. At the same time the edit button flys to the left corner and creates a simple menu structure in blue text on a pale green background. (see image 04 above). An animation was captured for our review that shows some manipulations of this curtain wall edit mode (see QuickTime QT-01) below.
QT-01 – Editing with the new Curtain Wall tool in ArchiCAD 12. This movie shows you how to go from selection, to editing environment, selecting view options, making changes to scheme and back out.
To select curtain wall components and change them you must use the editing tools built into the Curtain Wall edit mode. Your options in this mode are not as limiting as you might first believe. To relocate grid lines or delete lines altogether you do so in this mode. You can also rotate all the grid lines or rotate or move the grid as a whole. And you can add a grid line.
I discovered that sometimes you cannot delete a frame. There are particular reasons why this may happen. For instance, adjacent panels must be in the same “plane” in order to eliminate the frame. If not, you can always delete the grid line in the scheme. However, this is one area of the program where I thought there needed to be more work. Whenever I clicked on a grid line within the scheme view (see image 05) the whole grid highlighted with a particular line distinguished with heavy black anchors at each grid intersection along the line.
05 – Deleting a Grid Line. Black dots distinguish line to be deleted. It would be better if these lines turned a different color to make it more clear. Grid lines delete all the way across the grid as well, you cannot delete just segments.
However, this is not very clear and the deletion of any given grid line works entirely across the grid—you cannot create T’s in the grid (think T-splines on NURBS models but in just 2D). However, you can create stops or T’s within a curtain wall itself.
Advanced Capabilities with the Curtain Wall Tool
With such sweeping new technology under a key new feature Graphisoft has done a good job of giving it good capabilities for advanced curtain wall features. One basic feature I had a question about right away was how does one do glass corners in curtain walls. It turns out this is a very easy thing to do in ArchiCAD 12. (see images 06-08).
06 – Glass corners are created easily with the new Curtain Wall tool in ArchiCAD 12.
07 – Selecting corner frames and choosing “invisible from the mullion type.
08 – The glass or material panels automatically complete themselves at glass corners.
Essentially you turn mullions “invisible” and the glass then continues on to meet the other glass at opposing angles to form a nice neat glass corner. Because it is possible to turn both vertical and horizontal mullions invisible one has flexibility for various complex design options, such as a glass corner at a 60-degree bend wherein the curtain wall turns and becomes a glass roof system.
It is also possible to do a glass corner with a slanting wall meeting a straight wall or another slanting wall but this would require custom “mullion section objects” being created with their angles already determined.
This tool is very feature complete for a first pass. In the next version we’d like to see a few improvements. Firstly, we’d like to see the ability to create slanted walls in “chained” (polyline) mode. We’d also like to see the ability to edit chained-mode curtain wall segment lengths in plan view. It would also be nice to put the Reference line on the exterior face of the curtain wall system — and while were at it — we’d love to see an “unfold” option for editing big long chained curtain walls in 2D.
Partial Structural Display
The Partial Structural Display and 3D Documents features are both new and exciting additions to ArchiCAD 12. What Partial Structural Display does is allow views of “composition structures” to be seen both with and without finishes down to the core structure. The beauty in this is it allows far better coordination between the structural engineer and the architect. There are three basic view options: 1) Entire Structure, shows the entire composite structure from core to final finishes, 2) Core Only, which just shows that which is defined as “core” structure, and 3) Without Finishes, which allows you to see substrates and insulation systems, sans final finishes. (see image 09)
09 – ArchiCAD 12’s new Partial Display allows better coordination between architect and structural engineering consultant.
Once you have defined composition structures via the menu item Options > Element Attributes > Composites these saved and named composite walls, floors and roofs can be quickly accessed through the default settings palettes under the Floor Plan and Section > Structure > Cut Fill option.
With your model utilizing composites you can set up various views in plan and section and in the new 3D Documents. Sectional views will be vary helpful to structural engineering consultants whereby they can assess their core structure and availability of spatial conditions to the architect’s planned finishes’ limits. The following two views show different dimensioning based on Core Only and Entire Structure settings. (see image 10 -11) You can access this option via menu item Document > Partial Structural Display or via the Quick Options palette, which is the preferred way for us.
10 – A section view with Entire Structure chosen as display mode for composite structures.
11 – Core Only mode for partial display system. Note both palettes can set PSD options.
As useful as Partial Structural Display is it really takes flight under ArchiCAD 12’s new 3D Documents functionalities. For this part of the review we are again going to turn to QuickTime animations to capture some processes.
New 3D Documents
Firstly, in the first movie we show how to use the “thick marquee” tool which in plan mode selects “all floors and roofs” so as to grab the entire building top to bottom. Within this marquee selection area we are able to create a 3D view of the building in axon-section. (see QuickTime QT-02).
QT-02 – Creating a 3D Document starts with generating a 3D view through any section of the building. You do this using the Marquee selection tool for “All Floors” generating a partial axo cut through the building. From here you can zoom in, orbit/rotate, pan, et cetera. You can also use the Partial Structural Display options mentioned above to further control the view.
The value of being able to produce partial 3D views of your building in section should become obvious to anybody new to BIM. With the Orbit tool one can spin the building around to the view you want, zoom in, pan and setup for more detailed analysis of your work or to setup a dynamic 3D Document. (we’ll get to this in a bit).
Using the 3D Cutting Planes tool you can cut your axon further (in plan horizontal mode now) and toggle between the full building and 3D cut plane. (see QuickTime QT-03). This allows one to zoom into specific quadrants of a building in 3D — to any zone within the building — to capture a 3D sectional condition for further documentation.
QT-03 – This movie continues where the last one left off, creating a 3D Document and showing how to use the 3D Cutting Plane tool to generate the 3D Documents you want. No complex, hard to get to, or understand portion of your building can escape the use of this powerful tools combination. In the next image below we generate live-dimensions, in axo no less, with live-associative keying and notation.
In the movie above we are using our review test file building — which is far from complete — but complete enough to zoom into a curtain wall placed into a larger opening in a thick composite brick wall. Once the view angle is set one can “right-click” and choose Capture Window for 3D Document. This produces a new 3D document which is added to the Navigator – View Map. With this 3D Document you can add text, dimensions and utilize ID labels for your walls, doors, windows, floors and roof components. This information is viewable in various ways and stays live-linked. If you re-assign a wall a different type or composition this information will get reflected in a label on your 3D Documents..as such they remain valuable linked views. (see image 12)
12 – A 3D Document Window. Notice it is not rendered in OpenGL and the composite materials in the wall are fully visible. Labels are live-linked to components and dimensions are fully associative.
3D Documents are nearly the same as 3D views of the BIM model except you can’t navigate them in 3D or orbit rotate them. They are fixed. However, you can right-click on a blank section of the 3D Document window and select the contextual menu item, Open 3D Source and Redefine based on the Current 3D, which can reset your axon view angle, zoom, et cetera.
Other New and Improved Features
Of the remaining new and improved features the Hotlink module is an important update. Hotlinks are separate files linked into a larger master file. They are used for big projects where repetitive units, say hotel or hospital rooms, residential units, et cetera, are repeated extensively. These files get embedded into a master ArchiCAD file. From the new Hotlink Manager we find a revised setup that enables better visual understanding of all hotlinked files, as well as the ability to update all nested hotlinked files at once.
13 – Four new winder types of stairs have been added to the StairMaker tool.
Another new feature is the improved StairMaker tool, which is accessed from the Stair tool’s default settings palette. Key new features include the addition of four types of winder stairs (single winder at lower end, single winder at upper end, winder u-turn, and double winder u-turn). Stair settings include more parameters with a particular emphasis on the ability to make the floor plan view of stairs conform to standards. (see image 13).
Final enhancements to ArchiCAD in version 12 include excellent improvements to dimensioning input logic and the company has good videos of this on their website. The big difference is the ability to change dimension line direction during placement not just before. This is particularly interesting in diagonal situations. New Nudge and Align & Distribute functions are new to version 12 but in all honesty such new features are not ones any CAD company should be bragging about circa 2008.
Rounding things out ArchiCAD 12’s new transparent and image fill capabilities are most appreciated and enable far more sophistication in presentation drawings capabilities, building on its gradient fills addition in version 10. And the company of course has improved AutoCAD DWG support, but perhaps most impressive in this regard is that a new ACIS import option allows AutoCAD 3D Solids, Regions and Bodies to be converted into GDL objects. You can also transfer and convert all layouts into DWG model space and map all ArchiCAD fills to AutoCAD hatches.
Earlier we mentioned the performance improvements and in this time of economic difficulty many firms are looking to workflow efficiency. ArchiCAD 12 has plenty to offer in dramatic speed improvements and its ability to utilize multi-core processors. Back at the May National AIA Convention Graphisoft showed us an impressive demonstration of its algorithm improvements and multi-threading.
Final Thoughts
This update to ArchiCAD marks a turning point for the product with its new “systems technology” at the heart of the new Curtain Wall tool but soon to be at the heart of most of the future of ArchiCAD. While the new Curtain Wall tool is deeply impressive for its introduction there are clearly some areas where the methodology behind the new systems technology could be improved.
The introduction and methodology behind the Edit button, the new 3D editing window with its contextual and focused menu palette is strong. We especially like how the Tool Box collapses down into only tools related to the Curtain Wall. However, we feel there is a graphical disconnect between these “collapsed tools” and the “pale green-backed” menu structure contained within the Edit 3D window itself. We would love to see the same color highlighting (pale green in this case) tie these two sets UI controls together so as to cue the user that they are editing a “system” or editing at the system level. It is not yet clear how future versions of ArchiCAD will work but at the moment the systems technology behind the Curtain Wall represents a “different” way of editing.
In terms of addressing other weaknesses we cited in our last review, ArchiCAD 12, like other BIMs, doesn’t have built-in NURBS modeling nor does it have a simple SketchUp-like explicit modeling capability. However we understand that Graphisoft rolls its own when it comes to its geometric modeling kernel and that advanced form-making capabilities are already inherent in the code base. Getting at these vis-a-vis GDL however is not what is being advocated here. What is is more direct, explicit modeling tools in lieu of the “ancient” palette-based primitives-based modeling. Interestingly, in a demonstration of the MEP Modeler at Graphisoft’s offices in Massachusetts, it was made very apparent that capabilities in more complex form making using explicit modeling tools is well within ArchiCAD’s grasp.
It should also be cited that while other reviews of ArchiCAD 12 have noted that the product doesn’t provide “collision-detection” for advanced BIM coordination (we said that about version 11) Graphisoft’s new MEP Modeler extension to ArchiCAD 12 does precisely that with a very nice set of features. (Editor’s note: we will review the MEP Modeler at a future date).
Recommendation
ArchiCAD 12 at first sight doesn’t seem like it has as much to offer as maybe other updates of the past, but we spent some time with its new Curtain Wall tool to learn about its new “systems technology” and what we see today we like very much. For architects working on buildings with a lot of curtain walls they will very much appreciate the power of this tool. Graphisoft also seems, despite its relative size to Autodesk, content on beating them to the punch on key advances in hardware and software technologies, being the first to serious multi-core processor support. We will not be surprised at all if ArchiCAD is the first BIM to utilize Apple’s OpenCL open industry standard — like OpenGL now managed by the Khronos Group– to rapidly speed up aspects of the BIM program through further parallel processing.
For architects looking for BIM adoption paths ArchiCAD 12 is today a “must evaluate” option. The BIM program offers creative architects in particular superior capabilities in the areas of envelope design (eg: curtain walls, facades) and in general documentation with such strong features as 3D Documents and Partial Structure Display. In terms of learning BIM no other company does as much in interactive (voice-led) training materials — of which Graphisoft has no rival. Their BIM Learning Studio suite, which was utilized a bit in this review, is a gem!
Our recommendation to ArchiCAD 11 users working on larger projects (think HotLink module) or those with extensive curtain wall requirements is ArchiCAD 12 is a must upgrade. For those working in smaller scales or residential this upgrade has less to offer you specifically. And as we said in our last review, for those looking to jump from 2D to 3D BIM ArchiCAD offers some killer technologies and some technologies that make the jump to 3D BIM more graceful (such as its Virtual Trace) than other competiting BIM products. —- ANTHONY FRAUSTO-ROBLEDO, EIC.
Pros: Multi-core processor support and algorithm optimizations have dramatically sped up this version; New “systems technology” based Curtain Wall offers dramatically powerful new ways of handling large curtain wall designs with support for advanced features like glass corners, custom shapes, and angles and curves; Excellent new Partial Structure Display and 3D Documents capabilities; new MEP Modeler offers excellent MEP integration; matchless interactive help system and tutorials integration for learning BIM; excellent integration with sister product Maxon Cinema 4D Architecture Edition for high-end visualization and animation.
Cons: Needs updated modeling capabilities, more direct path versus complicated GDL editing/programming; no real associativity between systems or elements; no built-in collision-detection, though some exist with MEP-Modeler extension; no direct file support for sister product Nemetschek Vectorworks.
Advice: No BIM adopter should skip ArchiCAD 12 as part of their evaluation stage. For those architects on the Mac platform ArchiCAD is a top choice for your future on the platform. For those who long for the Mac and can’t get on it with their BIM tools today, ArchiCAD 12 should be looked at as a pathway to platform nirvana.
Cost: $4250.USD new; $895.USD upgrade / Mac OS X Universal Binary Support.
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