The Fisherman's Bastion on the Buda side of the Danube River.
Back in 1984,
a Hungarian physicist smuggled two Macs into his country. At the
time, ownership of personal computers was illegal under Communist
rule. Using Pascal, he and a teenager worked to write a 3D CAD
program for the Mac.
Today, ArchiCAD Version 1 still runs on a Mac SE in the lobby
of Graphisoft's main building; the teenager, Tamas Hajas, has
become president of Graphisoft US. And the physicist, Gabor Bajor,
is now ceo of a US$30 million software corporation. To celebrate
the 30% increase in sales in the last nine months, Graphisoft
held a Key Customer Conference in Budapest, from December 1-3,
2000. Participants came from 15 countries, and included ArchiCAD
users, Graphisoft staff, and members of the CAD media.
Friday Morning,
December 1
The welcome speech from ceo Gabor Bojar spoke of "proof
of concept." Graphisoft built its office park with multiple
tenants so that the company could test their ArchiCAD software
on their own buildings. After selling its CAD software to architects,
Graphisoft "buys back" architectural services. Located
on the Danube River north of Budapest, "Graphisoft Park is
a pilot project" and is now 1/3 complete; other tenants include
Microsoft Hungary.
In addition to ArchiCAD, Mr Bojar is pushing GDL, a very compact,
super parametric modeling language for describing 3D objects.
More than 100,000 products are now available in GDL's 3D format
-- but, "100,000 is nothing; worldwide, there are 30,000
vendors and 20 million products." Graphisoft aimd to encode
25% within the next couple of years. Once 25% is reached, Graphisoft
figures GDL will have reached "standards" status.
"How can an architectural firm measure its performance?"
asked Mr Bajor. His answer: Improve the value of the product you
create.
But first, a statistic: less than 1% of new buildings have a digital
3D model today (Brad Holtz figures the number is closer to 0.1%).
Nearly 100% of ArchiCAD users, on the other hand, use the digital
mockup -- the "single building model." In this CAD technique,
all components of the entire building is designed in 3D, in a
single drawing file. Then, 2D plans are generated from the 3D
model. The primary advantage to this approach is that changes
are made to just the 3D model; you don't have to worry about updating
a lot of 2D plans. The drawback, however, is that the computer
seems to slow down as the model becomes more complex. What disturbs
me is that the only solution Graphisoft (and other CAD vendors
who employ the single building approach, such as Bentley and Bricsnet)
has "Get a faster computer."
Mr Bajor declared that the 3D building model has a huge advantage
over 2D blueprints: it lets the architect make more money by selling
the more valuable digital model to the building owner. Indeed,
more time is spent marketing and selling buildings than designing
them. Some suggestions for the architect:
* Integrate facilities management into CAD: this reduces by 2/3
the time it takes to integrate facilities into CAD drawings. In
ArchiCAD, this is done with ArchiFM.
* For procurement, use 3D digital objects from manufacturer-specific
Web-based catalogs. In ArchiCAD, this is done with GDL.
Michael Hricak of Rockerfeller & Hrirak Architects
(USA) gave a rousing talk on "Being an Architect in the Information
Age." Some notes: Architects have always been called "builders."
But architects don't build; they are in the information business.
Unlike the old saying that "Information is power," it
is actually understanding information that is power. Architects
have a unique combination of technical awareness and spatial ability.
The general public is still suspicious of design -- do we really
need this, or is it "design" (ie, unessential)? Yet,
would we really want to live a world without design?
No technological advance has ever given us more time. Instead,
we are constantly working. There is a difference between an increase
in activity and an increase in productivity. Today, we are more
active (work more hours), but are not necessarily more productive
(earning more $$/hr).
Several other Graphisoft customers spoke next, including Tom Cederquist of Herlin & Co (Finland), who gave an enthusiastic presentation of large projects they have successfully (and unsuccessfully) bid on, including shopping malls and a town center.
Friday Afternoon
After lunch and a tour of Graphisoft's buildings and park, we
were given NDA forms to sign, then heard about the new features
in ArchiCAD v7, which is due to ship in early in the new year.
The only feature already announced is that it will support MacOS
X, running native in the Carbon environment, and optionally run
on MacOS 9 with no loss in performance.
Graphisoft is currently rewriting the code for the version following
(code-named Bendeguz, and nicknamed "Beetlejuice" by
some members of the irreverent American media).
Bence Kovacs described Graphisoft's product strategy. The
company is currently on an acquisitions binge, acquiring modules
for landscape design, facilities management, building security
and automation, structural, energy control and security, lighting
analysis, and urban design.
The afternoon concluded with a Q&A session with senior Graphisoft
developers. The questions came thick and furious, and the session
had to be cut off after 1-1/2 hours. The day ended with a formal
three-hour dinner at the Robinson Restaurant near Budapest's Central
Park.
Saturday Morning,
December 2
Imre Molnar continued the case for GDL in almost
evangelistic tones. Emphasizing its compactness, Mr Molnar gave
the example of a 3.8MB AutoCAD drawing being reduced to 400KB
as a useless JPEG, but a mere 35KB as a GDL object. Using the
example of a skylight, one GDL object represents 5,400 variations:
size, color, material of plinth, wind resistance, etc. Updating
one GDL object is easier than 5,400 objects. In addition, the
GDL object can include the following variations:
Graphisoft recognized that architects and component manufacturers are not working with objects, and Graphisoft plans to change that. Currently, some vendors provide specification data (ASCII text); some provide 2D data in several CAD formats (DWG, DXF, SAT, etc); some even provide 3D data; and a very few in GDL. To change that, Graphisoft announced new strategies and four new products:
1. GDL Object Explorer: a stand-alone GDL viewer that rotates and zooms 3D models; searches and filters large libraries; shows all variations of parametric objects; links to manufacturer Web sites for non-static data, such as price and availability; saves the object in DWG, DXF, and 3DS (3D Studio) file formats (translation loses parametric intelligence, but a solution is noted next). Free.
2. GDL Adapter for AutoCAD R14 and 2000 users. Uses ObjectARX to insert GDL objects into AutoCAD drawings, and allows GDL objects to retain their intelligence. If the GDL Adapter is not present, objects are displayed as proxies. After some questioning, I was surprised that Graphisoft is making it hard to obtain GDL Adapter; it will be free from manufacturers, but only if they chose to include the software on their CD-ROM of GDL objects. Another puzzlement is that GDL object intelligence is lost when an ArchiCAD drawing is converted to DWG (and vice versa); there seems to be no mechanism for preserving GDL via the Adapter.
3. GDL Web Plug-in allows Netscape, Opera, and Internet Explorer to display GDL objects posted at a Web site. Free from http://www.graphisoft.com/products/intelligent_object_technology/graphisoft_gdl_object_tools/ . GDL objects are available free and for $$$ from http://www.objectsonline.com and http://www.the-object-factory.com
4. GDL Publisher: for publishing GDL objects to a Web site via HTML. Not free.
Graphisoft has formed a new company, GDL Technology, whose job it is to create and push the technology. In addition, the GDL Alliance helps users with GDL. http://gdlalliance.com
After coffee break, we saw demos from several third-party developers. CADlink is a terrible name for a product that does an amazing job of performing heating and cooling load calculations, as well as lighting levels. Same price as ArchiCAD, but not available in USA until Imperial units can be added back in (which were yanked out 15 years ago).
Saturday Afternoon
The highlight of the afternoon was the two-hour long Press Roundtable.
Geoffrey Langdon (Architectural CADD Consultants) was concerned
about the future direction of ArchiCAD, and that all the new add-ons
could become a problem. Graphisoft responded that they plan to
control third-party development, and see this as an opportunity
for multiple parallel development. But will Graphisoft rely too
much on third parties for new features? "No."
When asked whether he wanted GDL to become the standard, ceo Gabor
Bojar responded, "We come from a country where 20 years ago
there were standards -- everyone wore the same shirt. We don't
like the word 'standards.' We don't want to make GDL a standard;
we want to make it compatible. We fit GDL to AutoCAD, to the IAI,
and so on." Charles Foundyller (Daratech) thought
that Autodesk will go out of its way to prevent GDL from working
in AutoCAD, such as changing the DWG format or the API.
Other concerns expressed by members of the press included: ArchiCAD
lacks light and demo versions that allow an office to try out
the software; Graphisoft needs to get more software into educational
placing; and, on a more hopeful note, perhaps the new GDL viewers
will give CAD users a sample experience of ArchiCAD.
The day ended with an informal buffet supper at The Aboriginal, an Australian-themed restaurant with Hungarian food and a live Calypso band. The following day, architect Zsuzsanna Szabo hosted a three-hour sightseeing tour of Budapest, including downtown Budapest, Castle Hill, St Stephen's Church (tallest building in Budapest), Hero's Square, and Castle Park.
In Conclusion
Until recently, CAD has been seen as a productivity tool. Now,
architects need to use CAD software as a business system. You
should consider CAD as a complete IT environment for running an
architectural office.
Return to My Travelogues
(c) Copyright 2000 by XYZ Publishing, Ltd.