Architosh

INDEX 03: ARCHICAD Workflows and Add-Ons

  • Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP

    • ONE OF THE OLDEST CAD programs in the world on personal computers, the original version of ARCHICAD (shorted as AC in the rest of this article) was written on and for the Apple Lisa computer. Discovered by Steve Jobs while in Europe, GRAPHISOFT immediately began working on the first versions of ARCHICAD on the early Mac upon Jobs’ encouragement.

    With strategic and marketing assistance from Apple, GRAPHISOFT had an early start on the notion of the “virtual building” which would later become termed as Building Information Modeling (BIM). Headquartered in Budapest, Hungary, and owned by the Nemetschek Group in Germany, GRAPHISOFT’s programmers have been writing some of the most efficient lines of code in the world in the AEC market. The BIM leader is widely regarded as having the fastest BIM technology in the world, particularly at scale on super large structures.

     

    ARCHICAD is the global innovation leader in BIM for the architectural industry and there are nearly 50 add-on applications that extend its powerful feature set.

     

    ARCHICAD’s technical leadership was not lost on Japan’s big five AEC companies. Three of the big five companies have standardized on ARCHICAD as their BIM platform of choice. One company, the architectural office of Nikken Sekkei Co. Ltd., the fourth largest architectural firm in the world, recently announced an online AC learning site titled ARCHICAD-Learning.com. For those who know Japanese, this is a superb free learning resource for ARCHICAD.

    ARCHICAD Add-Ons—Notable Items

    There are nearly 50 interesting and powerful add-on applications and plugins for ARCHICAD that extend the AC workflow. Many add-ons empower AC to perform better in certain countries and are therefore country or region specific. For example, SmartCON Planner is specifically created for the Japanese AEC industry and leverages ARCHICAD for visualization and planning of construction work. We have written about the app here.

    01 – SmartCON Planner is a Japan-only add-on for ARCHICAD that plans and visualizes construction.

    02 – BIMcollab ZOOM shown here, the AC add-on ties to two software systems together.

    01 – The Rhino-Grasshopper-ArchiCAD connection links AC to the world’s most popular advanced algorithmic modeling design tool.

    BIMcollab BCF Manager is an excellent add-on that leverages the buildingSMART file format BCF (BIM Collaboration Format) inside of AC to tie into the BIMcollab system for cloud-driven comprehensive issue management. Well there are numerous country-based add-ons, like SS3 Converter for ARCHICAD, a structural solution for the Japan AEC industry, or ArchiSuite, a suite of add-ons that provide value to AC in the Italian AEC industry, perhaps the most important add-on that bears mentioning is GRAPHISOFT’s own Rhino-Grasshopper-ARCHICAD (RGA) that ties McNeel’s Grasshopper algorithmic modeling environment to AC enabling designers to power their early design work with algorithms.

    INDEX 03: ARCHICAD Workflows and Add-Ons

    Here we have listed all ARCHICAD Add-on Applications and Plugins that in most cases support Mac OS X platform along with Windows platforms.

    Growing This List

    Have we missed a key ARCHICAD Add-On software package or plugin? If you think so please email us at info@architosh.com and tell us about it. We will be sure to add it to the list at the next update AND we will give you a complimentary annual subscription to Architosh INSIDER premium membership.

    series index page: Mac App Guides for CAD/CAM/3D/AEC industries.

    Speaking of which. Architosh will be reviewing and updating all our App Lists on a regular basis. See the dates below.

    List Update Log

    26 Dec 2017 — Page last modified.

    26 Nov 2017 — Creation Date

     

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