Forums >> Community >> The Studio >> ArchiCAD versus Revit

KimWong

active

Joined: Fri, Sep 16, 2005
74 Posts

Is it true that you can't export  100% DWG from ArchiCAD into AutoCAD like Revit? My client had problem with this exportation. Usually the lines are incompleted and borken up. Can someone comment on this? Thanks.

The reason why I ask is because I did a shoot out with ArchiCAD vs Revit 3 weeks ago.  This firm has been using ArchiCAD for 5 years. During the presentation I was asked can you do this and that. Basically, these are the probles faced by ArchiCAD. I was surprised Revit came out shinning. They were impressed too.

I only have 3 hours training on ArchiCAD back in 1998! I have no comment on ArchiCAD. I think ArchiCAD is also a good BIM. It depends on the user. Are you competent enough to use either software?

For me,  Revit is the way to go. I have no problem exporting into AutoCAD and 3DS. Also now with Revit MEP and Structure, you have a great BIM data to share around to expedite the design process.

Unlike our friend!   

-----------------------------------
G'day mate. I am migrating to Sydney, Australia. Looking for Revit Architect position. Any taker? Thanks. Kim Wong.

This user is offline

Mr Spot

site moderator|||

Joined: Mon, Jan 12, 2004
2889 Posts

 I made no comment on ArchiCAD and its capabilities outside of what you had already stated.  I merely commented on what you said Revit can't do.

I hate the ArchiCAD/Revit debate, but I saw some posts after yours that were taking it as gospel and thought it would be best if we all had the complete picture.

-----------------------------------

Regards,

Chris.

Co-Founder | BIM Consultant | Software Designer  B. Arch)

Xrev Revit API Addins | Revit Rants

This user is offline

View Website

Mr Spot

site moderator|||

Joined: Mon, Jan 12, 2004
2889 Posts

In Vista PDF creation is built in.  However Autodesk support DWF which although has some way to go its integration into revit is looking very good in the upcoming release and is also built into Vista.

 BTW, where did this random comment come from?

-----------------------------------

Regards,

Chris.

Co-Founder | BIM Consultant | Software Designer  B. Arch)

Xrev Revit API Addins | Revit Rants

This user is offline

View Website

Mr Spot

site moderator|||

Joined: Mon, Jan 12, 2004
2889 Posts

<quote> 

Ok im in REvit 2008 now and just created a new sub category under walls called timber stad walls, now how do i go about changing all me existing timber stud walls to this sub category. in the family types i have the following options. Basic wall, Stacked wall and curtain wall and i can find no where in the any of the edit dialogue boxes for this wall where i can change it to this newly created sub category.

</quote>

Mate, you've missed it all together.  Subcategories are for families not system families - the only reason you would create a subcategory under walls is for the walls sweeps/reveals that will enable you to turn them off independantly. 

Filters can be used to create a view that does this.

-----------------------------------

Regards,

Chris.

Co-Founder | BIM Consultant | Software Designer  B. Arch)

Xrev Revit API Addins | Revit Rants

This user is offline

View Website

KimWong

active

Joined: Fri, Sep 16, 2005
74 Posts

-----------------------------------
G'day mate. I am migrating to Sydney, Australia. Looking for Revit Architect position. Any taker? Thanks. Kim Wong.

This user is offline

pixelpusher

active

Joined: Thu, Apr 5, 2007
9 Posts
No Rating

Hi DJ Landreneau;

I used ArchiCAD for about 7 years, from version 6.5 to version 10. We haven't upgraded to AC11 yet, and probably will not. In my current firm, we're converting our 28 person firm to about 75% revit / 25% autocad, and I'm the point person on that change over. I have used Revit 13 months. At this point, I definitely prefer revit over archicad.

ArchiCAD Advantages:

1. Generally, more of an emphasis on appearance and visual output. It has many bells and whistles for visual appearance; eg: sketch renderer, gradients, stuff like that.
2. Decent renderer. Revit render is very, very poor, imho. Seriously its almost sad. ArchiCAD will let you precisely place your material textures on your geometry, whereas Revit does not; Rvt will only place the materials' origin point universally for the whole project (!). The problem w/ the ArchiCAD renderer is that it is split between the 'internal engine' and the 'good engine'... which means more upkeep, but is not the end of the world. Many of the marketing renderings you see for Revit must have been done in another package.
3. OpenGL preview: ArchiCAD will preview textures live on your 3d preview. (I find this most useful for site work.) 
4. Import/export to other common interchange formats: ArchiCAD has tons of export formats and generally plays nice w/ other programs. Revit is sort of channelized into Autodesk products. Revit will not export to .obj, for example (the near-universal interchange format for all non-autodesk programs), but will export into .MAX.
5. The camera placement and animation tools are more intuitive in ArchiCAD. For example, in revit you have to create a special cutaway view, whereas ArchiCAD you just region-select the area of interest. Revit seems a bit clunky yet in it's UI, but it works.
6. The roof / wall framing tools in ArchiCAD are also neat, but I don't know if people really use them much for anything real.
7. ArchiCAD has a very easy to use method for editing custom linetypes and custom patterns. (I'm not talking about dash or dot patterns here, but the really wierd custom stuff.) It's pretty much just a draw, copy, paste excercise to make some completely wierd hatch pattern. Revit, by constrast uses the same old .pat format from autocad, and cannot natively edit them, as ArchiCAD does. (I use actually ArchiCAD to create my custom Revit Patterns.)

Revit advantages:

1. Generally, Revit is much stronger in modelling, the control of information, and construction documents, compared to Rvt. 
2. NO Layers! I was very skeptical of this at first. But it works and at this point I can't imagine going back. In revit, the object 'categories' are the closest thing to a 'layer'. All that silly layer management just goes away.
3. NO External Libraries: In ArchiCAD, you have to manage all those many, many family files. Library / file management is a major important activity. You also have to worry about someone changing the master reference in the main library, because it's loaded fresh every time. In Revit, the equivalent .rfa files are all internal to the .rvt project file, and all that complexity just goes away.
4. Better control of appearance of objects with a view: ArchiCAD 11 may have improved this, but Rvt allows you to control every view right down to overriding the individual instance, in the particular view. The linework tool in Revit is also very handy and useable.
5. Better Modelling: In ArchiCAD you wind up making a lot of work-arounds, and using objects in strange ways to get the results you want. (eg wall reveals done w/ the truss maker tool.) Revit has a good in-place modeller, allowing you to do pretty complicated boolean editing.
6. By contrast, the Revit Family editor ('families' = objects) workflow is very powerful, rich, and reasonably easy to use as compared to ArchiCAD. Once you get the hang of it, you can create highly parameterized, highly functional 2d/3d objects.  In ArchiCAD, IMHO, there is an over-reliance on purchased or out-of-the-box objects. In revit, you tend to make all that stuff yourself, which is better. IMHO, this alone is worth switching to Revit.
7. Better handling of information: Related to above. It is easy to add new parameters to objects, or to your overal project. I can't emphasize this enough: it fundamentally changes how you work. Again, maybe this has been improved w/ version 11) But, once you've added a function or logic-based parameter to, say, ALL the doors and windows in your project, you'll never want to touch another line of GDL again! :D  Overal Revit UI is unpretty, but very logical and useable, once you get the hang of going 3-levels deep to change something.

Anyway, that is my opinion. Other people probably have different experiences.

This user is offline

pixelpusher

active

Joined: Thu, Apr 5, 2007
9 Posts
No Rating

This has been an ongoing piece of disinformation for many years. ArchiCAD can indeed import and export .dwg just fine*. It has some handy tools for automating how things are read / written and what layer, color, etc. the objects go on, and how they are grouped. In fact it even has some tools for round-tripping your dwg in to acad, then back into archicad. It can even read a dwg and convert all the blocks into archicad objects.

The problem is that Autodesk often adds new features to each new versions of .dwg, and it takes a while for all the other companies to catch up. But that is a universal problem w/ any program .  (fwiw, our office still has issues w/ the .ARX objects in ADT, just moving around between prior versions of autocad.) The way around it is just to back-save to a previous version with less, ahem, 'features'.  

* What people are talking about is just the nature of going from 3d to 2d. The lines are broken up in strange places sometimes, because it's a separate piece of geometry, like 2 wall objects stacked ontop of one another, or segmentation of a curved wall. Archicad's geometry is polygonal, so curves are segmented.  We just draw over that stuff to clean it up, as needed. Revit -> autocad IS indeed cleaner, as it seems to have some method for collapsing these items down and eliminating redundancies. Revit-> acad curves are particulary clean.

Again, I stopped using Archicad at v10, so they may have improved this.

This user is offline

callie

active

Joined: Mon, Oct 29, 2007
35 Posts
No Rating

This user is offline

callie

active

Joined: Mon, Oct 29, 2007
35 Posts
No Rating

This user is offline

Richard45

active

Joined: Sun, Aug 28, 2005
11 Posts
No Rating

As I understand the transltor for Archicad was actually purchased from autodesk and my one year+ experience with Archicad the translation worked great.

FYI,  My reason for switching back to Revit after one year+ with Archicad was two fold.  It is for the most part easy to create familes that are parametric in Revit and in Archicad you need to learn programming to create true parametric style objects in Archicad, so I really had to buy them since I did not get into programming.  THe other reason the larger projects caused a lot of updating time, that for the most part in Revit is instant, kind of like when Autocad regenerated views which was irritating. If they ever solve this and make it easy to create parametric objects the program would be great.

This user is offline

View Website

rdavies1973

active

Joined: Sun, Sep 28, 2008
20 Posts
No Rating

Hi all

I know this is a very late reply to an old post ... and in all liklihood DJ was able to make an informed decision.

To add further weight into the 'debate', I am currently a sessional Revit tutor in the Building Design Sector for Victoria University in Australia.

Our students are fairly lucky as they are taught 3 software platforms for drafting ... Autocad, Archicad, and Revit. I get to teach the full timers their Revit component in the second semester ... straight after they've had all of semester 1 to learn Archicad.

Granted, this is my own experience ... but this year, I had approx. 30% of my students (that were well advanced into projects using Archicad), switch over to Revit within 2-3 classes of learning Revit basics. The feedback from them was that the Revit interface was much easier to understand.

I can't compare against Archicad as I've been an Autodesk user from day 1 ... but I find that many uses of Autocad find the switch to Revit easy due to similarities in the interfaces (including snap symbols, general terminology etc).

As mentioned several times in this post ... Revit has it's fair share of glitches and it has a lot of improvements to make as far as I am concerned ... but that applies to most software packages.

The main focus when switching from 2D to BIM is to still 'let go' of the way you used to things. BIM is a different beast and cannot be compared to 2D.

This user is offline

Revit vs. Archicad [ 1 2 ]

15

REVIT 2009 VS ARCHICAD 12 [ 1 2 3 ]

33

Converting a Revit v 8.0 file into Archicad v10.0

8

Revit vs Archicad

5

Architect is using ArchiCAD Structural Consultant using Revit?

4