Last week Graphisoft announced the launch of Archicad 25. This year it has been a soft launch of the update at the global level with local product launches occurring over the next couple of months, including a launch here in Australia being hosted by Central Innovation held last Thursday.
For Architects that are currently using Archicad in their practice, this release like Archicad 24 is light on in my opinion. Some of the features/tools do provide workflow improvements, but the release doesn’t provide a big bang feature or significant improvements on the long standing wish list items of expert users.
Out of this year’s features, which ones do I think will bring the most benefit to me in my business, and most other Architectural practices across the globe! Let me go through them now…
New Selection Feature
The 2D/3D selection feature where users can select an element in the 2D or 3D window and then shift to the other window to where it is selected will provide some time savings on complex projects where several objects are stacked on top of each other in plan for example. I also like the ability to show and hide the selection that is part of this feature set so you can hide objects to see a space more clearly, for example.
Opening Tool Upgrade
The opening tool now being able to be any shape provides great opportunities to form holes in walls or trim off edges of walls where I would have used an SEO in Archicad 24. This feature will be of benefit for all Archicad users, despite most users thinking this feature would only be of benefit to larger practices that are coordinating with services engineers. Maybe consider the polygon openings as a potential trimming tool as well!
Graphic Override Improvements
The graphic override improvements are also a powerful feature set. It enables you to set up custom colours for your overrides. This feature takes a load off trying to get your pen sets aligned with every colour you may need in your presentations, where certain client types may have a colour system to match that is different to others. I can see definite uses for this feature in my workflows.
Surface Textures in Elevations
Surface textures in elevations, internal elevations and sections should provide an improved communication of materials and design for presenting to clients and to authorities for planning applications. Being included in Archicad 25 it saves people taking PDF drawings out of Archicad into Photoshop and applying textures afterwards. This to me is probably the best feature of Archicad 25.
This expands into the surface texture for fills. While the use of textures has been available in fills for a number of years, aligning and selecting a surface texture as the fill aligns directly and updates as the texture is changed for a selection.
Future features - Archicad 25 updates
Graphisoft has presented a few additional features that will be launched as part of an Archicad 25 update in Central Innovation launch last week, these features I will not discuss in this article because I do not know the privacy status of them, but they are really exciting features that bring Archicad 25 up to be an exciting release once they make their way into the software, once included in the update.
Conclusion
Moving onto Archicad releases of the future I am still holding out for Archicad properties for complex profiles, composites, and surfaces. It is my biggest long-standing request that will see a stronger connection between objects in the model and information that is otherwise manual data entry process. Fingers crossed moving into the future and seeing features being adapted and aligned with user needs or the big bang features that will drive productivity forward. Learn more about Archicad 25 on the Graphisoft website here.
