I just found out that ArchiCAD is switching to a subscription-only plan. I never liked ArchiCAD, but to be fair I only have very limited experience with it. Not to say that Revit is perfect, but 10 years ago there were multiple times more learning materials about Revit, so even if the learning curve might be steeper, at least there were some online courses.
People complain that Revit is not developing, but ArchiCAD promo videos were giving me the impression that ArchiCAD is developing even slower. That said, one huge advantage of AC over Revit was that it wasn’t purely subscription-based, and I think this was an important criterion of choice for many small (especially European) architecture firms. They could hold on to the same versions for years and because of the lack of development didn’t miss much. Well, this is about to change soon because they will be forced to pay even if the development is completely stuck.
I wonder how this might affect Rhino and VisualARQ’s popularity among small architectural firms. I’m afraid that VA is not developed enough to look like a real replacement for ArchiCAD, but there will be a couple of years of transition time to catch up a little. Up until the end of this year, you can still purchase the perpetual license of ArchiCAD, so the real test and migration might be delayed for a few years.
In the past, I was testing ArchiCAD – Grasshopper connection but comparing this to Rhino.Inside.Revit it’s not even close. RiR is many times more powerful.
What do you think, may AC shifting towards the subscription model might start a meaningful user migration wave? In my opinion, Rhino & VisualARQ are not ready yet to be treated as main arch software in many small arch firms (and forget about the bigger ones). In the current form Rhino is a very good “assisting” software. To be able to use it effectively as a main software you need to use some creative workarounds, and this means you need to know quite a bit about Rhino, Grasshopper, and VisualARQ. This might be too much to ask for from the young practitioners, especially when they just start and hop between jobs more frequently so each bureau might have different workarounds for the software limitations and problems. A lot of friction there…
@mich.platter
First wait for the new version 3, it is said to have improved a lot and Rhino with VA including Grasshopper can provide you with a lot and at a much lower price.
@moby-dk
RhinoInsideRevit offers many possibilities but the problem remains Revit, especially since Revit is relatively inaccurate and, for example, with ceilings with complex shapes, points sometimes cannot be transferred and you have to play with tolerances in order to transfer as many as possible.
I guess this item in the VisualARQ roadmap refers to your problem “Make wall layer wraps end at openings frame.” It is planned.
There are certain issues that just disqualify this program and any, even very good feature would not change that…
I think the VisualARQ team should consider adjusting their priorities, this particular problem is a long-standing limitation.
Having something like a void geometry inside GH Styles would help to achieve many things. I would like to use void intersections with the wall layers to perform some geometry operations and thus create e.g. window reveals.
The lower the wages, the more true it is. Even if you don’t pay your labor that much, in developed countries productivity gains from your employee offset the subscription cost. That said, you need to have a work for them to do. If you don’t have enough clients, then you might look at the productivity aspect differently.
Yes, in the end every CAD program has its weaknesses and strengths and as a user you just have to learn to get around the weaknesses, sometimes it works better and sometimes worse but there is no perfect CAD program and I say that with over 20 years of CAD experience.
Its not about being perfect, i simply cant draw a simple valid floorplan with VA. Like a concrete wall layer, insulation layer and a window. What am i supposed to do with that…
The other thing is even if everything works in theory, you still have to build a library of doors/windows and symbols to meet your local requirements, and thats a lot of work, also it requires employees fluid in Grasshopper. I doubt many would go for this, certainly not my office, subscription or not…
@mich.platter
You have to create a library for your needs in every program at the beginning and you don’t necessarily need VA for a floor plan, Rhino 8 is sufficient for that. VA is more useful for IFC export and import and certainly more.
I have to work with Revit for my company and you wouldn’t believe all the simple things I had to create in order to work reasonably well with the program and that for 4,500 € per year in license costs and I still get annoyed every day because Revit is a nightmare.
For example, I have created Grasshopper scripts for my company that even beginners can use and are foolproof (thanks to clear cluster labels in the input and output that can be assigned to the other nodes without any problems, even if you don’t know anything about it) for certain applications (e.g. sheet pile placement in Revit, etc.). Everything just takes time at the beginning and the program is unimportant because you have to do the work with every program, even expensive ones.
Not going to defend Graphisoft here, but they do have a useful library, at least for my country. Sure, its still a lot of work to adapt the templates and everything when you start out, but you dont have to do EVERYTHING and you dont have to know Grasshopper to program a simple window. And then i have to 2D draw floorplans like its 2003? Its going to be a hard sell…
VisualARQ is overdone in some areas (you have a tons of arrow display styles) yet it sucks at other important places. Just by looking at their Gh icons set I am loosing the will to use it, way too many and I hate they pushing their appearance on the main panel.
I had a high hopes for it but, after putting it to the test, I felt disappointed.
The only good thing I could point out is that it is making sections per-layer with respect to the depth of the model - something not yet achievable through Section Tools or Make2D. Plus for IFC export-import.
I will give V3 a try but I don’t expect much.
Speaking of ArchiCAD - great layout tools but poor modelling experience (unless you are into squares). It is oriented into manufacturing drawings and it does it well but the future is paperless.
Don’t get me wrong, I would never defend a software because they all have their strengths and weaknesses and I just wanted to show from my experience that you have to put in more or less effort to get the templates you need and these are very dependent on what you have to do anyway. (Architecture, civil engineering, structural engineering or infrastructure)
We all have the same problem of getting the best out of the respective software without too much effort.
I also really hope that VisualArq will improve in some aspects. Some are supposed to come in V3, such as walls and ceilings finally being able to be tied to the layers like in Allplan and Vectorwork, but I also hope that you will finally be able to create windows with non-straight openings natively and not have to go through all sorts of detours. I also hope for things like making it easier to calculate the temperature curve of the walls using Grasshopper for VA walls (in Germany the U-value) and to pass it on to the walls, but hope dies last. VA is not perfect, but considering that it is relatively new and if you look at other CADs and how long they took to integrate basic functions, they are doing quite well, especially since it is not a big company like Autodesk, but of course any justified criticism is fine.
Well, VisualARQ has 15 years and it started with a very strong backbone of Rhino, having such sometimes it might be a strength and sometimes it may be too stiff.
It maybe depend on the user, but this seems to me like a feature needed especially in big and complex projects which VA is not suited fo anyway. I would be more content with a better wall intersection system or wall cutting. We will see how VA will incorporate changes like the whole Grasshopper Model Object and Content Cache system.
To not make it entirely about the VisualARQ.
Revit has many options to do all sorts of Graphical Overrides which is very limited in Rhino, Detail Views in Rhino are far from that, not to mention Model View which can only show one state at a time… You can try to hold your breath waiting for the entirely paperless reality, but I don’t know if you will survive that long. Also, we should remember that even if slowly, other programs develop too.
Revit has Dynamo AND Grasshopper, ArchiCAD - I don’t know if they have something on their own, but AC - GH is not the answer…
Look at Revit, the software has been around since the late 90s and even Revit is still a load of crap today and that’s what I can judge because I have to work with this crap every day and can only do a lot of things only via RhinoInsideRevit that aren’t possible natively in Revit.
Wall connections in Revit are also a pain, especially with complex connections, and there is a very large company behind Revit.
I know a few programs for visual scripting and Dynamo is the worst I’ve ever experienced. Grasshopper is miles ahead, especially in terms of ease of understanding and the connection with RhinoInsideRevit, and also in terms of the options with or without a plugin, Dynamo is nowhere near it. Visual scripting in Vectorworks is also worlds ahead of Dynamo but much more complex, especially when getting started and much more difficult than Grasshopper, but once you understand it you have lots of options that would never be possible with Dynamo in Revit.
I don’t want to take sides with any software but Revit is the worst software I have ever had to work with in the last 20 years or so and as an employee you have no choice but luckily there is RhinoInsideRevit which makes my work a lot easier, especially when it comes to extracting data from point clouds in order to transfer it, as Revit is slow as hell with point clouds but my personal favourite is and remains Allplan even if this software isn’t perfect but I know countless ways to implement my wishes and I gave up on Vectorworks when the license was changed to only an annual rental.
We draftsmen and company owners are just a small part of what is treated like dirt by the big companies like Autodesk, according to the eat or die principle and so we just have to make the best of the software that offers us the best options in terms of cost/benefit.
Thats “only” around 10 years more than VisualARQ. VA started much later so maybe it has less technological debt, but still I’m not so sure that VisualARQ and Rhino 11 combo will be as feature rich as Revit, and where at that time will be competition?
I might be biased because I never wanted to touch Dynamo, I completely agree that Grasshopper is more user friendly - here I agree. Having both Dynamo and Grasshopper makes Revit a very strong competitor.
I never had a chance to look more closely at Vectorworks, I’m not sure where it is popular, but it is niche. Interesting that Nemetschek now has two similar products.
Do you know in which countries/regions Allplan is mostly used?
I know there is at least one open OpenBuildings enthusiast on the forum @PeterFotiadis.
My awareness of BIM programs for architects was taken over by two programs - ArchiCAD and Revit. I wonder where all the other software lands, especially seemingly big, like the one from Bentley Systems. Where are they used and why?
Unfortunately, nobody knows how VA will develop, but I hope that VA will offer the most important functions needed for architecture and engineering planning in the next few years, and what I can say is that the team behind VA is implementing requests for the next versions more quickly than Autodesk with Revit, where simple, small requests sometimes take 8-10 years, and AutoCAD has actually gotten much worse over the years, especially with snapping.
Well, the greatest strength of Grasshopper with the plugin (RhinoInsideRevit) via Dynamo is that you can manipulate/update objects afterwards, because a connection is created from the script to the generated objects, I have no idea how exactly, but pinned objects can be updated afterwards. Dynamo is, apart from its lousy interface and search, just create and that’s it.
Vectorworks has its strengths in visual scripting, for example, where you can drag standard nodes into the window and then edit the node (the code) afterwards (by double-clicking on the node) and if you drag the edited node into a library you create a new node, so to speak, but for the code adjustments you need advanced experience in Python and that was my problem, for example, because I only have experience in C# and didn’t want to deal with it any further after the license change (it’s just no longer of any use to me).
As far as I know, Allplan is used a lot in Europe, especially in Germany, but due to Autodesk’s extreme strategy, Allplan has unfortunately been partially replaced by Revit in Germany. Revit is clearly inferior to Allplan, especially in the engineering sector and also in the architecture sector, but Autodesk has taken great advantage of its market position.
Unfortunately, the use of the respective software in companies never depends on the draftsmen but on the bosses who have no idea and only act on hearsay.
