The New Releases of Revit Architecture and ArchiCAD

AECbytes starts this month with three new Tips and Tricks articles: a Google SketchUp tutorial showing how to use images to paint the surfaces of models for generating more realistic imagery; an ArchiCAD tutorial that shows how to create Title Types, which are intelligent drawing titles that can automatically be applied to drawings as they are added to Layouts; and a tutorial that shows you how to create interactive panoramic images by stitching multiple photographs seamlessly in Photoshop CS3 and using a free java applet called PTViewer. Hope you continue to find this application-specific content authored by experts helpful.

In last month's newsletter on the AIA 2007 National Convention and Expo, I provided a brief overview of the new releases of both Revit Architecture and ArchiCAD, which were demonstrated at the show. This month, we will review both applications in more detail, starting with Revit Architecture 2008, followed by ArchiCAD 11. It is interesting to compare the different approaches to BIM in these releases. Revit Architecture 2008 continues to build upon its solid foundation as an easy-to-use, powerful, and comprehensive BIM application for architectural design, with improvements in this release focused on make it easier to work with groups and large projects, and on enhancing the display options so that different views can be customized to look exactly as desired. ArchiCAD 11, on the other hand, focuses on 2D and on going from 2D to BIM, rather than on BIM itself, with an innovative and sophisticated Virtual Trace feature that simulates the physical tracing paper concept, and a new Worksheet environment that allows drawings to be developed independently of the model, allowing more control and facilitating distributed work processes.

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Thank you!

Lachmi Khemlani

Editorials > June 2007