AUTOCAD, ARCHICAD OR REVIT?..... THE BEST SOFTWARE FOR A SOLE PRACTICING ARCHITECTS OFFICE

Archicad Didn't Perform As Well as I Had hoped

If you have just found this post without reading my previous ones....I'm an Adelaide Architect & It's been 9 months since I decided I would transition my office from AutoCAD to ArchiCad. The original aim was to replace my existing 2d Autocad documentation system with 3d Archicad. My conclusions are that in contrast to the hype about the product Archicad is not  easy to learn and intuitive.  The program and files are huge and much down-time is spent just waiting for screen regenerations. Many of the keyboard shortcuts are 2 key & are difficult to achieve with one hand and if you take the other hand off the mouse it is counter productive. Many of the shortcuts are hard to remember & not mnemonic.... hitting "K" for text is just ridiculous!!! Demolition plans (even with the new demolition feature) are not easy to produce. Selection of objects can be a bit hit and miss.... you think that you haven't selected an object and try again (and again). Sometimes an object just will not select easily & other times it is just due to the fact that the huge processing power required means the time-lag for the processor to communicate to the screen is delayed. The positives are the quick 3D sketch designs and the fact that you can generate a set of documentation that looks fairly complete (to an untrained eye) in a fairly short space of time. For a large office this means you can put out a set of documents, get your fee & deal with the problems later. The real detailing still needs to be done the old fashioned way, line by line by someone who knows how things are put together.  For a sole practitioner this "pump the drawings out" method just doesn't work..... you want to get the documentation right as you have to deal with the fall-out yourself. So Archicad is "Smoke and Mirrors". The reality is that the content isn't there. You get sections quickly but they don't tell you much more than ones you can sketch up by hand with a fat "felt tip" in a few minutes. If you want to get sections with real detail you have to still spend the time.  

 AutoCad Still Has It's Merits

So I started this little fling with Archicad because I had fallen out of love with Autocad. I documented the entire experience in a series of posts. The new program seemed exciting and new at first, but as time went by (and I became more familiar) the little things began to bother me & I began to long for the and easy relationship I had with Autocad.  I now know enough to produce a full set of documentation with Archicad.... but do I really want to??

After 9 months of Trialing Archicad I have now abandoned the idea of using it for my own practice. It wasn't wasted time however. I now know enough about Archicad to be able to understand and use it. This has made me comfortable with the fact that it just wasn't the right fit for me. I can see the benefits for a large office, or for a young student just starting out, but for a sole practitioner with plenty of construction experience AutoCad is still a winner.  

My Archicad experiment is now over & so I continue to use AutoCad in my Practice for 2D documentation. I produce 3D models in Google sketchup (free) when required. For a small practice I find this works well and the price is right.  I have stayed with AutoCad because it is familiar & I can produce a set of drawings that are highly resolved, a reasonable size, require minimal processing power and are compatible to most engineering companies.

Autocad may have won me back, but recently I find I am looking sideways at Revit & thinking about what she may be like.....