Not really breaking news, but since Graphisoft Australia have after approximately 2 weeks finally managed to update their website to reflect the launch of ArchiCAD 13 we thought we jump on the review train and provide some insights ourselves.

We were not a part of this years Beta testing program, so we are keenly awaiting its local release at which time we will be able to give some further insights – until then we will briefly touch on a few of the key topics, also in posts to come.

Let’s start with a quote by our very own Owen on TW2, featuring first on graphisoft.com before being removed then coming back and now it has spread to graphisoft.com.au…

“I think this [64-bit] + TW2 would make AC13 a fantastic upgrade, regardless of any other new features.” – ArchiCAD-Talk user ‘Owen’

Surprisingly, this has been used without authorisation – at least with AC12 Graphisoft asked permission to use a comment from the forums regarding multicore support in their marketing material, even if it was then attributed to our then employer.

Regardless, the original can be seen in it’s context here:

What are the new tools for ARCHICAD 13?

Since we treasure our independence and this quote seems potent enough for Graphisoft’s marketing drive we it is necessary to clarify a few things:

• The above quote is taken a little out of context – basically they ignored the fact it was an OSX user making this comment, which is why being asked to be quoted for marketing purposes would have been appreciated.
• At the time of the post, i.e. before AC13 was even officially announced, Owen (among many) speculated about 64-bit support on OSX (we only use mac’s as do many of our clients and that’s for a reason… ;0). It now turns out 64bit ArchiCAD is only available on PC’s and unlikely to see the light of day on OS X anytime soon.

As usual some heated discussions ensued on ArchiCAD-Talk – please excuse some comments made by several people, including ourselves. Nonetheless some important issues have been raised, here is our selection of the most interesting threads, which we will comment on shortly:

• Regarding the Graphisoft subscription programme (Gold Select Membership here in Australia) – ArchiCAD-Talk discussion
• On why there is no 64-bit version of AC13 for OSX – ArchiCAD-Talk discussions here & here
• And on the biggest thing to hit ArchiCAD since Teamwork … Teamwork 2 – an Architosh Indepth and various ArchiCAD-Talk discussions here, here & here

Please note the last two items above are not the only new features of ArchiCAD 13, however they are the most significant both in terms of functionality they introduce and in what they mean to the longer term development of ArchiCAD.

We will deal with these and the other new features of ArchiCAD 13 in a series of posts over the coming days – so be sure to watch this space.