Anyone use Archicad?

[Hans N. Flinch]

Any Archicad users out there?  How is it for LA?  Small firm that does everything from high end res to national parks work.  

[Robert Anderson]

Why use Archicad when you can use Vectorworks Landmark. I think it would be best for a firm like yours that has such a diverse range of projects.

[Kimberly Voisin]

I have used Archicad but it was for Urban Design. I found that the difficulty for me with the program was that there were few training resources and those that were available were geared towards architects.

[Sean Ryan]

 Land FX is relatively cheap and the way its set up joining data bases with drawings or projects, is like a time saving machine; the extra money you could make back quickly in time saved.  

Would like to hear a comparison with Vectorworks from someone fluent in both.  

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

If you have that kind of diversity of projects it is likely that you are sharing files or at least getting files from a lot of different sources to work from. Why would it make sense to use anything other than what is most commonly used by those who you are sharing files with? Chances are that it will be AutoCAD.

Land FX won’t do anything harmful to your files if you want landscape specific add ons.

Chances are that you’ll have to share your files to other offices for permitting plans or staking out in the field. The easier it is for those other offices to use your files, the more likely they are to refer work to you. Compatibility is a huge advantage in the referral game.

[Robert Anderson]

While you are right the dominant program is AutoCAD with 2014 there is even less issue with compatibility across programs or platforms for that matter. I use Vectorworks Landmark on a Mac Pro at my own practice and consult for another firm using it on Windows machines. We not only share files across different platforms but we work with architects using AutoCAD and Revit and we exchange files with both of the with DWG’s and IFC’s (International Standard for BIM, kinda the DXF of the BIM world) and there has not been any issues.

There is one other added advantage to VW Landmark that I failed to mention. Hans is using GIS data you can seamlessly import shape files into the program.

[Robert Anderson]

Would love to give you a comparison between Vectorworks Landmark and Land FX as a user; however I never became fluent with Land FX.

This is in no way a very valid point but I personally like the way VW looks compared to Land FX.

[Hans N. Flinch]

This is all great information!  The main reason that we decided to add Archicad to our consideration list is that one of our frequent architect partners uses Archicad.  However, the local rep here has yet to make a compelling case for it’s ability to easily model terrain, plants etc and I’m having a really hard time finding online resources for it (much like Kimberly stated).

I’m running a trial version of Land FX right now and have ran into the occasional bug but otherwise I really like the way it has been streamlining data.  I briefly explored Vectorworks Landmark, but we’ve more or less ruled it out due to the fact that everyone in our office is familiar with Autocad, and we are concerned about having to deliver files that meet the NPS standards (dwgs w/ certain requirements for workflow). 

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