Viz or ArchiCAD

[Dawn Layton]

I work for a small architecture firm interested in purchasing some 3d software. I have been doing quite a bit of research and have narrowed it down to Autodesk's Viz and Graphisoft's ArchiCAD. We are looking for something that we can use as a design tool throughout the process and to generate fairly good quality renderings at the end. We will continue to produce CD's in 2d on AutoCAD Lt. (I know ArchiCAD is designed for more, but at this point we would only be looking at it for modeling and rendering.) We would like a software taylored for architects and one that is fairly easy to use. In the furture we might add on a better renderer, but in the beginning we would be relying on the modeling program. I would like some feedback from people who use these programs. I used ArchiCAD 4.5 at school, but have not used Viz. Hopefully I will get a chance to look at the Viz demo in the next month. Any information/opinions are greatly appriciated.

[chuck]

the archicad guys demo'd their stuff at my school a few years ago, but i havnt spent much time on it personally. i do know that the renderings look sub par compared to viz's.

 

that said, it seems that you want something more as a design program, and for that i think sketchup is a good choice. its very easy to use, fun, and its cheap. the other advantage is that it looks good out of the box, and you dont need to spend a lot of time messing around with lighting and textures.

 

viz takes a lot of practice to create good renderings, and i personally wouldnt consider it a design tool- its a bit too slow, atleast when you are trying to make photo real stuff.

hope that helped,

 

chuck

[...mott]

ArchiCAD is a bit of a jack of all trades... the rendering is good but not great, the modeling capabiliteis covers about 80% of what a typical architect might want to model, the 2D drawings it produces can be perfect if you know how to set the bugger up.

 

Its only outstanding feature is that you can do an awful lot with very little expertise.

 

If your looking for modeling/rendering alone... I'd say Vix, Max is the way to go...

 

But if your looking for something to integrate into an architectural office, a jack of all software... ArchiCAD. I have used it quite a bit and you can get up and riunning in surprisingly short time.

 

mott

[bricklyne]

I work for a small architecture firm interested in purchasing some 3d software. I have been doing quite a bit of research and have narrowed it down to Autodesk's Viz and Graphisoft's ArchiCAD. We are looking for something that we can use as a design tool throughout the process and to generate fairly good quality renderings at the end. We will continue to produce CD's in 2d on AutoCAD Lt. (I know ArchiCAD is designed for more, but at this point we would only be looking at it for modeling and rendering.) We would like a software taylored for architects and one that is fairly easy to use. In the furture we might add on a better renderer, but in the beginning we would be relying on the modeling program. I would like some feedback from people who use these programs. I used ArchiCAD 4.5 at school, but have not used Viz. Hopefully I will get a chance to look at the Viz demo in the next month. Any information/opinions are greatly appriciated.

 

I may be wrong but I believe the last two post are by people who are probably not familiar with or haven't used the latest offering from Graphisoft in ArchiCAD in version 9.0. In terms of usability, effeciency and workflow, there have been magnanimous improvements; at least from version 4.5 which you say is the last one that you used ( huge difference!!!!). I would also mention that Graphisoft considerably upgraded the internal rendering Engine with a Lightworks rendering engine,and while a great many number of people ( myself included) were initially disappointed in the decision to exclude radiosity from the renderer, the Lightworks engine as it is, is rather easy to set-up and even produce 'fakiosity' with and near photorealistic quality images. It's won me over at least in as far as the time it saves when we need a quick shot render to study the concept in the middle of the design process or maybe to experiment with material changes ( and it produces some rather qualtiy renders too!!). Some of the renders we produced with it were even good enough to use in a impromptu meeting with clients. Of course at the end of the day, it still doesn't come close to what VIZ or MAX are capable of but considering the set-up requirements ( and learning curve) for the latter 2 as well as the given time constraints that any normal architect undergoes, I believe that ArchiCAD has it just right given all its other capabilities. Besides which, the export feature allows for export of various types of .3ds structured files which allows it to intergrate very nicely with VIZ and MAX in an office that has them as well and chooses to have the best of both worlds ( the most ideal situation, usually). Consequently one is able to exploit the modelling tools of ArchiCAD which are very intuitive to architects as well as the massive parametric object library which grows almost daily through GDL central, and saves oodles of time that would otherwise be needed to model them from scratch or search for them from the web. As an added bonus, they fixed ArchiCAD's very impressive but previously buggy Sketch renderer that allows for hand-style non-photorealistic rendering through a very very wide variety of inter-combinable styles. Very nice for concept presentations.

 

Someone also mentioned sketchup, which is indeed a great program for concept study and the initial design (massing) stages, although there have been geometry and mapping problems reported with it's .3ds exporter. (They should be releasing a patch to correct that sometime soon as well.) I should note that Sketchup has an export-plugin that allows one to export study models into ArchiCAD and facilitate construction documentation or model clean-up and modification if necessary. The plugin also needs a bit of work, but so far it's possible to work around it.

 

So what I'm I saying at the end of the day? Basically in an ideal world a forward thinking small office would ( in my opinion) want to have, at its disposal, all three programs in a workflow that somewhat follows this scheme;

Sketchup at initial design concept stage => ArchiCAD for CDs and additional modelling and/or stand-along modelling => VIZ/MAX for final presentation photorealistic renders for marketing and final client presentation. Obviously most offices can't afford the time or the resources to invest in having all three, which is why at the end of the day if all else fails I would lean towards recommending ArchiCAD as it allows one to intergrate and add the other 2 or others ( it has very wide export capacity with such formats as Cinema 4D, LightWave, Lightscape, DWG/DXF, VRML native formats and others as well for firms that have other programs requirements or budget capacities) at a larger stage when budgetary growth or market forces compel them so. But eventually it depends on what you really want to do with it. As has been mentioned before ArchiCAD is a jack of all trades and would be sorely wasted if used primarily ( or only) as a modeller, and I would recommend it in this capacity only if you can't afford to invest in learning ( or hiring someone to learn or who knows) how to use VIZ/MAX; because of their rather steep learning curves and comprehensive interfaces and because as I mentioned before ArchiCAD is easier and more intuitive for trained architects to learn how to use because it is designed by actual architects and not CG designers. As I mentioned before ArchiCAD v 9.0 is a really massive leap in terms of features, effeciency and customizability over v.4.5 and I would recommend you to try to get your hands on a demo of it ( v9.0, that is) to get a sense for some of the new tools and features available.

 

But on the flip side if you can afford it and really, modelling and rendering are all you are interested in, then by all means please go for VIZ because that's what it's custom built for and as such as all the requisite powerful tools necessary to do this, and in fact in this capacity alone is probably ( along with MAX) the most powerful renderer on the market today.

 

Sorry for going on too long, but I hope this helps.

[Dawn Layton]

Sorry for going on too long, but I hope this helps.

 

No, definitely not too long. This kind of in depth responce really helps!

 

that said, it seems that you want something more as a design program, and for that i think sketchup is a good choice. its very easy to use, fun, and its cheap. the other advantage is that it looks good out of the box, and you dont need to spend a lot of time messing around with lighting and textures.

 

We would like to use the software as a design tool and to produce final renderings. We looked at Sketchup, and as a design tool it looked very useful, but it did not seem to have the ability to produce the level of finished rendering we desire.

 

I am going to expand on my initial query a little...

 

How difficult is it to make changes to the model in Viz? Being that the design is always changing, we would need to make changes easily and quickly. (I am familiar with the process in ArchiCAD.)

 

Also, are there resources where you can purchase/share items such as furniture, windows, people, etc for Viz? (I know there are for ArchiCAD.)

 

What are the support communities like for each of the softwares? Can you get competent help easily and quickly on-line when you need it? (This will probably be a lot.)

 

Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge!

[bricklyne]

........

How difficult is it to make changes to the model in Viz? Being that the design is always changing, we would need to make changes easily and quickly. (I am familiar with the process in ArchiCAD.)

............

Also, are there resources where you can purchase/share items such as furniture, windows, people, etc for Viz? (I know there are for ArchiCAD.)

 

What are the support communities like for each of the softwares? Can you get competent help easily and quickly on-line when you need it? (This will probably be a lot.)

 

Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge!

 

As for your first question ( as to the difficulty of making changes as the design goes along), with VIZ it's a bit tricky because essentially VIZ ( and by extension MAX) is used as a final render and presentation preparation tool, in the sense that the plan is more or less fairly complete ( not under going whole-sale changes) when you import it into VIZ as a dwg or dxf. Once it get's converted to the .Max file format, you can't reintergrate changes done unless you undo some of the extrusions and the like that you have already done since importation. So in this sense it doesn't very easily facilitate prepetual change as the design is going along ( i.e. you wouldn't use it concurrently with AutoCAD as the plan is daily undergoing changes, but rather it will only come in at the end once you've finalized plans, and elevations). But it is not entirely impossible to facilitate a process or workflow by which changes can be added (or subracted) from a VIZ model although that takes a bit of set-up. So in this respect ArchiCAD would have the upper-hand because the changes are Real-time and concurrent with the Plan ( and hence model) development.

 

Some good resources that I know of, off the top of my head, for shared objects ( you are already familiar with ArchiCAD's GDL central, I presume) for VIZ and MAX would be sites like http://www.evermotion.org, http://www.3dtotal.com, http://www.cgtalk.com, http://www.dosch3d.com to name a few. The first three are more or less free as members share objects and scenes they've created in max and viz ( there are also quite a few useful tutorials available) while the Dosch3D sell their massive library of objects in a variety of formats ( lightwave, cinema 4D, Maya ). Another resource is.. . ArchiCAD itself! I personally seomtimes convert objects from the ArchiCAD library into viz/max format and that saves me a lot of time in creating newer objects ( the reverse, i.e. Viz/max objects into ArchiCAD is also now possible through the new 3ds import in ArchiCAD v9.0, so I save time either way). You also find a great deal of support from other users from sites like these and as for ArchiCAD, the home-site www.Graphisoft.com's user talk-forum has an invaluable and great deal of support not only from fellow users but also from Graphisoft tech-people as well who use the forums as well.

 

I hope this helps.