GRAPHISOFT introduces ARCHICAD 21—With New Patent-Pending Technology

GRAPHISOFT today has announced the update to its flagship software ARCHICAD to version 21. The industry-leading BIM software will feature new patent-pending Predictive Design™ technology.

Predictive Design

“Intuitiveness has been a key differentiator for ARCHICAD since the beginning,” said Peter Temesvari, Director of Product Management at GRAPHISOFT. “Our next-gen Stair Tool provides a creative, productive, and enjoyable user experience—the reason why architects love ARCHICAD.”

The Budapest-based BIM innovator says version 21’s new stair tools do all the heavy lifting in the background, including making sure the architect’s design complies with all relevant global and local design standards. This, in turn, turns what is “usually a painful task into something fun” says the company.

“We also further refined ARCHICAD’s best-in-class OPEN BIM workflows in version 21,” adds Temesvari, “making interdisciplinary collaboration a very smooth process.”

 The Important and New in ARCHICAD 21

New Stair and Railing Tools

Architects face several challenges designing stairs because in addition to often being geometrically challenging they must also contend with strict building code compliance. The new Stair Tool in version 21 validates against human ergonomics on the fly.

01 – GRAPHISOFT introduces ARCHICAD 21 with patent-pending new technologies.

As the stair geometry is being produced by the new Stair Tool algorithms working in the background automatically validate thousands of design options—all in real time—while producing optimal stair designs to choose from within the context of the specific building.

GRAPHISOFT’s new next-generation stair technology is aimed at letting architects focus on the creative aspects of stairs and while streamlining the tedious and technical aspects. If a stair problem can be solved in multiple valid ways, the software offers a selection of the best options that fit both the user’s graphical input and the chosen standards.

As for stair railings? New railing technology means users will be able to instantly associate railings along stairs or other building elements, whose posts and panels can be assigned as patterns or customized individually.

Updated CineRender Engine

CineRender is the rendering engine technology behind sister company Maxon’s Cinema 4D. The updated tech offers architects integrated, photo-realistic options in the BIM context and introduces new Light Mapping technology and Secondary GI (global illumination) methods. All of this is aimed at speeds up and improvements in visual qualities.

Element Classification System

Classifications are core to intelligent OPEN BIM workflows which provide industry-leading interoperability among disciplines. To advance OPEN BIM in version 21, GRAPHISOFT has introduced a flexible way to classify elements supporting any number of national or company-standard classification systems.

Classifications can thus base saved for future projects and transferred via XML file format.

IFC Modeling Referencing

Version 21 can now place IFC files as hotlinks into ARCHICAD projects, as protected reference content. Model filtering narrows the inserted IFC reference content by categories, such as Structural or MEP, or by element selection.

The inserted IFC model content can be updated as well, from the linked file.

Collision Detection

ARCHICAD 21 has now Collision Detection onboard. Typically this technology exists in specialized BIM applications aimed at model integrity and checking. With this added feature, version 21 makes this process, increasingly more germane to architects working in full BIM workflows, a part of the de facto workflow and thus streamlined.

More Features

These are just the highlight features of ARCHICAD 21. The new updated to the award-winning BIM software package also delivers dozens more functionalities and improvements. ARCHICAD 21 runs on both Windows and Mac platforms and its mobile solutions run on Apple iOS and Google Android.

For more information about ARCHICAD 21, and to sign up for the online streaming of ARCHICAD 21’s world premiere, please visit www.graphisoft.com/archicad.