A New Release from Autodesk and a New Product from Graphisoft

AECbytes starts this month with a Viewpoint contribution from Dominic Gallello, President and CEO of Graphisoft. He posits that the free-form building environment as a movement is about to move into high gear around the world and considers how this will affect architects and their design thinking, and ultimately the space in which we all live and work.

A significant development last month was the release of the next version of AutoCAD and its 2007 family of products. After years of neglecting to overhaul the dismal 3D capabilities of AutoCAD, the new release finally gives 3D its due with a completely redesigned interface and new capabilities for conceptual and detailed 3D modeling. Is it already too late for AutoCAD to catch up with competing 3D solutions or is it better late than never? Let's find out in the review of AutoCAD 2007.

The Tips and Tricks section features two new tutorials on Revit Building and ArchiCAD, and in this month's Building the Future series, we will get an overview of the work being done by the National BIM Standards Committee.

Towards the end of February, Graphisoft announced the launch of a brand new product, Change Manager, which automates the process of checking for drawing revisions across complete construction drawing sets. Targeted for the needs of construction companies, subcontractors and engineers, Graphisoft Change Manager is designed to enable members of a project team to easily identify, communicate and manage changes in construction document sets that have material impact on time, cost and schedule. AECbytes will review this product in detail to see how it works.

Thank you!

Lachmi Khemlani

Editorials > April 2006