Archicad 10 Importing Question

[Continuumx]

I am looking hard at Archicad, I have seen the videos and had a chance to test it out at store. It looks and feels good, much more so than my experience with ADT 2007. Now for the big question, how does Archicad 10 handle importing of existing 3d geometry created in another program (I am aware of the plugin for sketchup, but lets say you use Cinema4D, Rhino or something else?

 

Lets say I like using Cinema 4D R10 for conceptual modeling. I build a nice 3D model there that I would like to import into Archicad 10 to either trace out in plan or extract as much of the intent of the the concept into BIM.

 

How can you do this? At the moment, I cannot find any 3ds or obj import options. Is this possible? The matter of extracting and taking info from the conceptual model is something I would work out, the problem is, is this even a possibility to get the work into Archicad. Maybe I could slice and dice the model up to get some kind of floor plan that could be traced in Archicad?

 

Any ideas?

[bricklyne]

Well, since you're a C4D user ( or rather assuming you like using it) then themost logical solution or option for your particular scenario would be Maxonform (http://www.graphisoft.com/support/maxonform/, http://www.graphisoft.com/products/archicad/solutions/maxonform.html, ), also from the makers of C4D ( Maxon) and developed jointly with Graphisoft (ArchiCAD's developers; they're all under one roof now (Nemechtschek, or however you spell them) so it really doesn't matter).

 

Maxonform is essentially C4D lite (without the rendering modules) remixed as a plugin for ArchiCAD to allow for all the NURBS, freeform organix modelling that ArchiCAD doesn't handle now. And it has 2-way bidirectional interoperability with ArchiCAD which means that you can create something in Maxonform and send it to ArchiCAD or vice versa, by sending already created AC models and objects to Maxonform for modification. Unfortunately, at this moment, AC objects lose their parametricity (their 'smartness' and parametric data) once they are modified outside ArchiCAD, so changes have to be only at a final stage of a project. But, for what you're asking, if you created an object in Maxonform and imported it into AC through both programs exchange module, ArchiCAD would be able to get the elevations, and plan outline of the object without any problem in the elevation/section window. Sections are a little trickier depending on whether your object is solid , shelled or not. And it (Maxonform also works as ArchCAD is running so you can switch between both programs as you're working. You should check it out.

 

Otherwise I would suggest you try to get the 3DS- import plugin from the Graphisoft website (it's free and it's available with the Goodies add-ons, that are available for download). It also does pretty much the same thing from inside ArchiCAD, but the downside is that it was not developed by Graphisoft, and is thus not supported by them. This basically means that it can get pretty unstable and crash with the imported objects poly-count gets too high ( or at least it used to with previous versions of ArchiCAD, I'm not so sure about ArchiCAD 10).

 

But really if you're the type of person that does lots of freeform type modelling on top of Arch-modelling, then MaxonForm is really worth investing in.