Macworld 2004

In This Issue:

• Keynote Presentation
• Building Design and Visualization Software
• Call for Inputs on BIM Acronym

At this time last year, I wrote about the Macworld 2003 show in Cadence AEC Tech News. This year again, I made my annual trip to Macworld, held in San Francisco from Jan 6-9, to keep abreast of developments on the Mac platform. 2004 marks the 20th anniversary of the original Macintosh computer, and it is good to see the once leader and now underdog Apple still surviving as a company, and possibly even poised for a comeback, judging purely by the rapturous mood of the keynote presentation.

Keynote Presentation

Although I have been to Macworld several times in the past, this was the first time I attended the keynote presentation by Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. What a show! It was hard to figure out who deserved more credit for its success--Jobs with his charismatic presence and terrific presentation skills, or the audience of Apple fans who repeatedly punctuated the presentation with thunderous applause. The net effect, even on a non-Mac person, was that of feeling uplifted by the power of technology and the fierce passion and loyalty that it can inspire.

Several new product announcements from Apple were made at the keynote presentation. These include the iPod mini, a smaller and less expensive version of Apple's popular iPod music player; Final Cut Express 2, a new version of Apple's professional-quality digital video editing software; the Xserve G5, a rack-optimized server with dual 64-bit processors, speeds of up to 2.0GHz, and up to 750 GB storage capacity; the Xserve RAID storage system, which provides up to 3.5 TB in 14 hot-swap drives and a 2GB Fibre Channel interface for reliable and fast data access; and the iLife '04, a new version of Apple's integrated suite of "all the tools needed for work outside the office"--iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD--featuring various enhancements.

The show-stealer, however, had to be GarageBand, Apple's new application for music-making that is being integrated into the iLife suite. Take a Mac with GarageBand, plug in a USB or MIDI keyboard, and it turns into a musical instrument cum recording studio for amateur and professional musicians alike. The demo of the application at the keynote, provided by Jobs and popular musician John Mayer, was fascinating, and made me want to go out and buy a Mac for this purpose alone. Apple is making a smart move by developing well-designed personal use software as a means to popularize and market the Macintosh. Given the company's flair for innovation and creativity, it seems a shame that it hasn't seriously ventured into developing software for professional applications. I would love to see the equivalent of GarageBand for building design!

Building Design and Visualization Software

On the AEC front, Macworld 2004 featured the traditional cross-platform software applications, ArchiCAD, VectorWorks, and form•Z, along with a few others. SketchUp, which made its Mac debut last year, was being demonstrated along with Piranesi, which recently released a Mac version. New to the show this year were Art•lantis and PhotoCAD, which were also being demonstrated in conjunction with SketchUp. Not all products had new releases to show, and for those that did, the releases were mostly incremental x.1 versions.

Graphisoft was demonstrating the latest release of ArchiCAD, version 8.1. This includes a number of refinements over version 8: automatic drawing numbering system and associative drawing titles that speed up the creation of final layouts; better coordination of layout and paper sizes when exporting/importing drawings between different CAD solutions; various DWG/DXF import & export enhancements for improved collaboration with the extended design team; customizable one-key shortcuts; more control over connecting and intersecting walls; and greater customizability of a project's display and documentation.

auto•des•sys Inc. demonstrated its latest release, form•Z 4.1, which doesn't include any new features compared to version 4.0, but has a new ACIS version that improves smooth object modeling, and a new version of Lightworks that speeds up rendering and improves radiosity lighting. Some sample rendering scripts were also previewed from the upcoming 4.5 release, which will feature an API for plug-ins and scripts. For more details on form•Z's new open architecture, see Cadence AEC Tech News #101.

@Last Software unveiled the ninth version of its product, SketchUp 3.1. This includes enhancements such as the addition of thumbnail images to the component browser; 2D vector export (PDF, EPS, DWG and DXF) that supports text and dimensions; direct export of SketchUp models to Piranesi EPIX format in Mac OS X version; inclusion of metric units systems in 3DS export; the ability to specify a custom geographic location for sun angle calculation; and improved shadow casting onto faces.

The more groundbreaking news from the SketchUp stable, however, was the availability of a plug-in for ArchiCAD. Similar to the SketchUp plug-in for Autodesk Architectural Desktop I described in the last issue, this plug-in will allow the 3D design concepts developed using SketchUp to be intelligently imported as building objects into ArchiCAD. As I pointed out in my review of ArchiCAD 8, one of its critical shortcomings was the limited support for conceptual design. The availability of the SketchUp plug-in will go a long way towards addressing this limitation. Hopefully, we will someday see similar plug-ins for Autodesk Revit and Bentley Architecture as well.

Two applications I hadn't seen before at Macworld were Art•lantis and PhotoCAD, both by Abvent. Art•lantis is a photorealistic rendering and animation application that works with 3D models created in various applications such as ArchiCAD, VectorWorks, AutoCAD, formoZ, and SketchUp. Key strengths of the application are real-time previewing of texture mapping, lighting, shadows, and depth of field, and an interactive and easy-to-use interface. PhotoCAD, on the other hand, is a solution for stitching together multiple small images into a larger panorama that can be integrated into architectural or 3D scenes. It can also straighten an elevation or facade assembled from photographs, and calculate a parallel projection from the original perspective photograph. I saw a demo of this capability being gainfully used to create a dimensioned façade as a backdrop for modeling in SketchUp.

Does the Mac platform have a future in the AEC industry? Judging by the steadily growing number of vendors who are developing Mac OS versions of their products, it certainly does. I occasionally come across architects who absolutely refuse to work on Windows, and I know of some AEC firms who exclusively use Macs for their servers because of their superior performance and reliability. However, until the major industry vendors like Autodesk and Bentley develop Mac versions of their AEC applications, Apple will, in all likelihood, continue to remain a niche player in the building industry.

Call for Inputs on BIM Acronym

In the final issue of my Cadence AEC Tech News, I had invited readers to share their views on the BIM acronym (which stands for Building Information Modeling) and suggest alternatives to it for describing the model-based processes as opposed to the drafting-based processes commonly known as CAD. I will publish the responses I received in the next issue of the AECbytes newsletter. There is still time to participate in the discussion, so please send me your thoughts on whether you like or dislike the acronym, and if you can think of a more appropriate and better-sounding term.

About the Author

Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.

Newsletters > Issue #4 > Printer-friendly format