New ARCHICAD 21 is Shipping: Offers Stair Tool, Collision Detection and Much More

Each new version of ARCHICAD from Graphisoft is steeped in new features that provide greater flexibility for architectural design.

New Features such as the Stair Tool take on the formula of past successful hierarchical elements such as the Curtain Wall, tried and true aspects of the flagship product.

“Step up your BIM An Intro to New features of AC21,” a recent webinar, outlined features such as the Stair Tool and how you can create stairs with flights, landings, railings and risers, even spiral staircases more easily than in past versions.

You can also add in standards or make them invisible if they aren’t applicable.

New Features for ARCHICAD 21 include the following:

Intuitive tools that include the Stair Tool that allows you to create and design any stair and any design scale. The Stair is a hierarchical element like the Curtain Wall, and the main stair element consists of multiple sub-elements including treads, risers and support elements, including beams stringers, and monolithic or cantilevered structures.

Users will find that Stair sub-elements are GDL components, that allow for including Building Materials and/or Custom profiles.

For greater ease in designing stairs that meet local requirements, the ARCHICAD 21 Stair tool includes three approaches:

• A set of customizable construction rules
• An automatic stair construction algorithm.
• A graphical interface with automatic solutions to resolve conflicts.

Productivity improvements include the Touch Bar support for the new MacBook Pro that allows users to access common ARCHICAD commands based on current window and selection.

These include:

• Switch between Floor Plan and 3D windows
• Show All vs Show Selection 3D based on selection anywhere in the model
• Open active Tool Settings and selection Settings
• Enter and exit Edit Mode for Stairs, Railings and Curtain Wall
• Edit Composite or Profile of the selected element
• Common GDL shortcuts when editing scripts.

The Multiply dialog and function have been enhanced and include more options.

These features include

• New option to multiply copies of any element to a clicked path
• Options to rotate copies to path, none or randomize
• Modify stacking and copies during input when multiplying along path, directly from the Tracker
• Updated Multiply dialogue ensures easier understanding
• New Multiply option: “increment and Spread”, to define stacking and number of copies both graphically and parametrically

Magic Wand Graphical Feedback

This feature is now provided to see how elements will look before clicking.

Parametric Transfer among Line, Arc, Polyline and Spline means that the Parametric Transfer can be injected directly into each of those objects.

Dashed Line Handling, is a new algorithm to handle the dashed line presentation of polygonal elements. This new representation and algorithm makes it less likely to miss corners.

Associative Dimensions for Wall Center Lines provides new options to place dimensions on the individual skins of the composite, including Reference Line, Core only and All skins mode, in Floor Plan and Sections/Elevations.

Text Style Favorites will include Uniform Rich Text Formatting with updated and consistent UI that is part of all text related tools: Text, Labels, Dimensions and Interactive Schedule. These are available from Text Style Settings from within any Dimension tool and from the Interactive Scheduler

Autotext based Labels, enables users to create their own associative custom labels without GDL knowledge, listing element-specific information This is made possible by Autotext’s ability to access element-specific parameter ad properties to

Detailed Section/Elevation Depth Control makes it possible to edit Section lines directly in Section view, without having to switch back to Floor Plan.

These new options enhance this feature:

• Break Section/Elevation Limit Line and Marked Distance Area Line (previously available only for the main Section/Elevation line)
• Graphically edit Section Line boundary extents directly in Section, when Section/Elevation Range is turned on
• Graphically edit any Main Line, Limit Line, and Marked Distant Area Line break points, directly in Section
• Improved editing of Section Marker in Floor Plan

Selective Parameter Transfer

Replacing the Favorites Only Parameter Settings are the new Element Transfer Settings. These can be saved into sets and used by Parameter Transfer as well as Favorites to allow modification of particular element parameters.

More available settings have been added. The Element Transfer Settings and their sets are now stored directly in the Project and available for Teamwork users.

An important addition is the addition of Building Materials and Custom Profiles (created in Profile Manager) to GDL elements.

Updated CineRender Engine

CineRender by MAXON has been ARCHICAD’s rendering that offers architects integrated, photo-realistic rendering options in the BIM context. In the newest version Light Mapping and Secondary GI methods are added for more realistic, yet fast rendering.

Element Classification System

An ARCHICAD model, behaving as a central BIM database, can store all project data and makes it accessible to any project stakeholder. In previous versions a fixed set of Element Classifications were provided, but in the new version there is a flexible method of classifying elements that support any national or company standard classification system

IFC Model Referencing

IFC files can be placed as hotlinks into ARCHICAD projects as protected reference content. The inserted IFC reference content can be filtered with Model Filtering to more specific categories such as Structural or MEP, or element selection.

Collision Detection

In ARCHICAD 21, Collision Detection is a part of the new feature set.

Tags: 3D, AEC, Archicad, architects, architecture, BIM, building, building design, collaboration, construction, design, Graphisoft

Categories: AECCafe, BIM, building information modeling, collaboration, construction, file sharing, visualization

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