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bricklyne · November 21st, 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard McCarthy

This is from another experience user of both program :

"If you follow skisouth's advice and run Revit out of the box, and ArchiCAD out of the box, I think you will find Revit to be superior. ArchiCAD has an open API, and at least a few 'add-on' programs are needed to make it do some simple things, like stairs. (ArchiStair is free, but its still an add-on, and thus must keep up with the development cycle. Will ArchiStair work with ArchiCAD 9, soon to be released?) Rendering in ArchiCAD is done via an add-on. In some cases, add-ons are good because they allow third party developers to create programs that work woth ArchiCAD, but for the most part Revit is 'complete' out of the box and really hasn't required any outside development.
ArchicAD is developed to run on both PC's and Macs, which many people like. It also means the programmers have to do double-duty and make sure the code works the same on both platforms. Some might say that this could slow down the development cycle. If your office runs Macs, well then maybe ArchiCAD is for you. If you are on PC's, I'd lean towards Revit.
Revit has the financial backing of Autodesk, one of the largest software companies in the industry. Being an Autodesk product assures continued compatibility with other Autodesk software, including AutoCAD, and maybe more in the future. AutoCAD DWG compatibility is absolutely essential.
Revit is easy to learn and use, as you have already discovered. It is very intuitive, and is programmed to work how Architects work, because it has Architects developing it.
ArchiCAD has over 20 years of experience in the 3D CAD/BIM market. Revit has 5. ArchiCAD should be widely accepted and an industry standard by now, shouldn't it? Revit in my opinion has created more of a buzz in 5 years, and keeps getting better with every release.
Building content in ArchiCAD will required learning a programming language called GDL.. Yes, add-on programs will help build the code for you, but to truely harness the power of ArchicAD, you will need to learn GDL. Are you a programming firm, or an architectural firm?
Go over to http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/ and read their forums. You will find out plenty about what ArchiCAD can and can't do. Just recently, there was a thread discussing the procedure to put a perspective view on a sheet in PlotMaker (another separate program to lay out sheets). It involved several steps to do....in Revit, drag the perspective on the sheet. Done.
Revit has bi-directional parametrics. You can make a change in a schedule, and the model will update.
ArchiCAD doesn't assure full drawing coordination. In ArchiCAD, the user can 'break' the links to views, so they are no longer 'live' views of the model. If a change is made to the model, the view wont update. This leads to coordination errors. In Revit, you will never have to second guess that a detail callout is filled out correctly.
There is so much more, and I will try to add them here as I think of them. There are many Revit users here that have a lot of ArchiCAD experience before coming to Revit, so hopefully they will add to this. I have zero ArchiCAD experience, except what I have learn from their newsgroup. If I have mis-stated anything here about ArchiCAD, I will gladly welcome corrections.
__________________
Scott Davis
Revit Tips and Tricks Forum Manager
Forum Moderator
WLC Architects, Inc.

I have to add that ofcourse this guy is bias LOL.. he is after all Revit tips and trick forum manager...

... but some of his points ARE valid.. really upto you to try both to find out which is better...

I just have only 2 things to say regarding this. Firstly, the person quoted in the post above as an "experience user of both program", by his own admission, both here and elsewhere has NEVER used ArchiCAD. I repeat; By HIS own admission ( even in the above quote)!! Consequently, a lot of what's said about ArchiCAD in that quote, is not only hearsay ( from out-of-context Graphisoft User forum's Wishlists and the like), highly subjective opinons but also patently untrue and considerably misinformed regarding the product itself and its capabilities (specifically regarding stairs and GDL programming). I'm not going to go into any of it here, due to the high propensity of this subject degenerating into a flamewar, other than to agree with the suggestion to visit Graphisoft.com for more qualified information regarding the product itself as well as a demo if you're so interested. Needless to say, to qualify the above would be like implying that based on 3DS MAX users' complaints, the program is horribly unstable and crashes all the time simply on the basis of fragmented complaints of some its users at their forum, when in truth all that the users had asked for was a bit more stability in the program's core. In any case, before I get banned, flamed, or any such thing, just take the above information with a huge grain of salt, and please consider all sources of information carefully in making your decision or considering products.

Secondly, IMHO any of the 3 products ( Revit, ADT, ArchiCAD) can be highly productive in any environment, if optimally and effeciently integrated with and based on whatever resources you have at your disposal; and consequently to get into a discussion of which is better than the rest is not only a pointless exercise, but also ignores the fact that it all boils down to which product you're most comfortable working with, and as such, have a personal preference for. Best advice in this kind of scenario; try to get a working demo of each, and if possible run a small project through each of them from start to finish, and use the respective experiences to help you make the decision as to which direction to go.

Remember that at the end of the day you're the one that has to live and work with the software after you make up your mind, and someone else's experience will only take you so far. And contrary to what you might otherwise hear, there's no silver-bullet, do-it-all, bug-free, limitation-free solution or software in this or any situation; they all have their own strengths and weaknesses and it eventually boils down to which ones you're willing to work with ( or work-around).