Category: Graphisoft

BIM in the Cloud

The cloud is receiving a huge amount of hype and many industries are latching on to the benefits and having huge success (my favorite, for example, being Xero)

Building Information Modelling (BIM) with it’s large file size, high end graphic requirements and team collaboration approach presents a number of hurdles in regard to adopting a cloud solution.

The topic for this post has been on my list for a long time now so I was quietly stoked to see that Viktor the CEO of GRAPHISOFT has saved me the time and written “Debunking the Myths About BIM in the Cloud”

For further reading you may also want to check out:

The Cloud: Hope or Hype

BIM and the Cloud

BIM and the Cloud, Part 2: The Economics of Private Cloud Computing

ArchiCAD 15 – Broaden Your DESIGN Horizons

As a GRAPHISOFT Partner we hear about the next version well in advance but we are sworn to secrecy so I am stoked that today we can talk about the next version of ArchiCAD – Version 15. ArchiCAD 15 delivers some awesome features and I can’t wait to get it to my customers:

May 3, 2011

BUDAPEST, May 3, 2011 — GRAPHISOFT announced today ArchiCAD 15, the latest version of its premium design software for architects. ArchiCAD 15 enriches architectural forms available for designers to unleash their creative minds. The new version also expands the scope of the BIM workflow to include renovation & refurbishment projects.

“ArchiCAD 15 addresses architects in their native language with innovative approach to handling design spaces and forms,” said Miklos Szovenyi-Lux, Vice President of Product Management, GRAPHISOFT. “In addition to reinventing the 3D design space and providing architects with a wide array of new design tools, ArchiCAD 15 also addresses the increasing number of architects who earn their living from renovation and refurbishment projects,” he continued.

ENRICHED ARCHITECTURAL FORMS

The evolution of forms has always walked hand-in-hand with the evolution of structures. From the simplest barrel vaults to the most sophisticated rib vaults, the architect has always aspired to combine durability, utility and beauty (Vitruvius). These very principles can be seen in the finest examples of Modern architecture as well. ArchiCAD 15 expands the design capabilities of its BIM tools, including new Shell structures, to support the broadest spectrum of architectural shapes and forms found in both classical and modern architecture.

NEW DEFINITION OF DESIGN SPACE

The evolution of the design process has gone through at least as many revolutionary steps as the forms and structures themselves. During the course of the past few decades, architects have gradually left the “flat-lands” of 2D sketching for the exciting “high-lands” of designing in 3D virtual spaces. The increase in freedom brought about by the third dimension, however, adds a new degree of difficulty to orientation in space as well. ArchiCAD 15 introduces 3D guidelines and editing planes to revolutionize the 3D space definition, making the perspective view the natural, 3D environment for building design.

RENOVATION WORKFLOW SUPPORT

The advent of modern technology has significantly increased the life-cycle of a building. As a result, renovation and refurbishment projects are nearly equal to the volume of new buildings in most of the developed areas of the world. ArchiCAD 15 expands the design scope to renovation and refurbishment projects with native BIM design and documentation workflow support all the way through.

In addition to the impressive list of new and refined design tools and workflows, ArchiCAD 15 includes improvements to its IFC interface and OPEN collaboration workflow with engineers, full 64-bit support for the Mac OS, and improvements to its parametric object libraries as well.

ArchiCAD 15 will be released May 23, 2011. Shipment to customers will begin a few weeks after the official release. Following a tight release schedule, all 26 local versions are planned to reach the market by the end of Q3 2011.For more information about ArchiCAD 15 please visit: http://www.graphisoft.com/archicad/

For a live demonstration of ArchiCAD 15 please register for the coming “BIM and DESIGN” Webinar on June 7, 2011.

About GRAPHISOFT

GRAPHISOFT® ignited the BIM revolution with ArchiCAD®, the industry first BIM software for architects. GRAPHISOFT continues to lead the industry with innovative solutions such as the revolutionary GRAPHISOFT BIM Serverâ„¢, the world’s first real-time BIM collaboration environment, and the GRAPHISOFT EcoDesignerâ„¢, the world’s first fully integrated building energy modeling application. GRAPHISOFT’s innovative solutions have fundamentally changed the way architects around the world design and collaborate.

Berlin

I am currently in Berlin for the annual GRAPHISOFT International Partners Conference but have managed to find a couple of days to explore Berlin – a city with an incredibly rich history that I could never do justice to explaining.

Instead I decided it is easiest to simply provide a selection of photos showing the old and the new architecture along with many of the ‘monuments’ that illustrate the history.

2010 – A year in review

This time a year ago I was feeling very optimistic about 2010. After we reached a real low point in September 2009 we saw the market improve and literally within 3 months things were heading in the right direction again. My own optimism was shared by the building industry and we saw 2010 get off to a great start with January, February and March all showing steady improvement. Then in April the wheels started to fall off again!

While this may make it sound as though 2010 was a bad year i have to be honest and say while it didn’t turn out as expected I am generally happy with the results from another challenging year in business.

Anyone who knows me, knows I like to get things done so it is always interesting to review what was achieved to help provide a baseline for setting realistic goals for a New Year.

Without wanting to bore you completely below are some highlights (and low lights) for 2010:

Graphisoft New Zealand

As outlined above the NZ Building Industry picked up for Oct 09 – Mar 10 but then dropped away again. Building Consents hit a major low in October and while signs are pointing in the right direction consent continue to be at low levels.

This indicator translated to low sales for Graphisoft New Zealand, however, with our eyes on the future we have sustained our staffing levels and look forward to an improvement in 2011.

From a marketing perspective we take a medium to long term view and invest heavily in eduction (see below). Marketing needs a continual focus especially during a down turn in the market and we have continued to invest heavily in this regard.

ArchiCAD 14 was released in June and took inter-disciplinary BIM Collaboration to a new level. This in conjunction with the GRAPHISOFT BIM Server released with ArchiCAD 13 provide extremely effective communication of information rich building models.

Cadimage

Cadimage had a big year and again managed to grow sales year-on-year. While growth was single digit it is still a remarkable achievement all things considered. More pleasing was to see that total sales in the last three years are triple what they were in the first three years of this business.

We pushed through $1 million USD in export sales during the year and also launched our new branding.

The branding has been well received though we still have a long way to go with it. Working with BRR at the strategic level has proved interesting and enjoyable.

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise have continued to support our global marketing efforts and we entered the fourth year of our Market Development Grant. Funds were used for strategic branding, translation and market visits.

Travel

2010 was a reasonably light year for travel for me though I did fly around the world twice and visited 9 countries.

In April the GRAPHISOFT IPC was held in Budapest and was all good until a certain volcano impacted our return trip – this added 3 additional countries to those I had planned to visit.

Septembers trip was less eventful from a interruption perspective but I crammed a lot into 12 days visiting San Francisco, Houston, Nottingham, London, Budapest and Oslo.

Education

As outlined above GSNZ continued investing in education with 2010 marking the third year of our involvement in the NZIA Graphisoft Student Design Awards – this time visiting Wellington.

We were also stoked to see ArchiCAD has been used extensively in the design of the FirstLight House which has won a place in the Solar Decathlon. This is a remarkable achievement and we are proud to be a sponsor as the team prepares to take their house to Washington DC to compete.

Cadimage Group

From an overall perspective our continued strategy of building both an NZ focused business and a global business in parallel is proving a solid strategy. Our continues global growth has helped balance the downturn in NZ at just the right time – we await the time where things align perfectly so we can explore some new growth opportunities.

I have enjoyed the step we took with creating a ‘proper’ board of directors and appointing Lance Wiggs as a director. The regular meetings have been both productive and stimulating and provided a real focus for working on the business. Our final meeting for 2010 saw the presentation of our strategic plan and budget for 2011 which is something I am very excited about.

2011

January 2011 marks six years for me as Managing Director of the Cadimage Group. The last six years have flown by and the business has changed remarkably in that time. There have been highs and lows and I believe I have learnt a lot from both the positives and the negatives.

2011 also marks a new era in Cadimage with some high level changes to [hopefully] take the pressure off me and also provide opportunities for other key staff to step up. While I remain ultimately responsible for the delivery and development of our strategy I believe my team will take big steps and the business will improve immeasurably as a result.

While I still will be full time for Cadimage I am on the lookout for opportunities both to grow Cadimage, but also opportunities for me to offer my expertise to other start-ups and businesses.

There are many more exciting changes in store for 2011 which we will share with you as we go. I think the review above shows we can achieve a lot in a year so I expect 2011 to be no different.

The Euro

“absolutely conceivable that the euro will replace the dollar as reserve currency, or will be traded as an equally important reserve currency”

Alan Greenspan 2007

All my purchases of ArchiCAD and related products are transacted with GRAPHISOFT in Euros so I keep a constant eye on the ups and downs of the Euro.

As can be seen from the above quote the Euro was once seen to possibly be a stronger  currency than the Greenback in the longer term – how things have changed!

With the recent turmoil in Greece, many commentators are questioning how long the Euro will survive.

For those of you interested I found this article in the NZ Herald (originally published by the Independant in the UK) quite informative.

Gábor Dénes’ Birthday

Today I was pulling up Google and was intrigued by the current Google Doodle:

Due to my dealings with GRAPHISOFT and frequent visits to Hungary I was aware of two facts that related to the doodle. First I knew the Hologram had been invented by a Hungarian and also that the inventor had won a Nobel Prize.

What I didn’t know was the inventors name – Gábor Dénes – or his birthday – 5th June 1900 – of when he received his Nobel Prize – 1970.

Google were therefore celebrating what would have been his 110th birthday!

As a side note on Google Doodle’s I heard that while most people stay on Googles search page for only a minute or so, the day Google celebrated Pac-Man’s 30th Birthday the average site visit was over 30 minutes!

Where have I been?

With such a long time between posts I imagine many of you may think I have been travelling again – but following our epic 73 hours return from Europe I haven’t actually left the country!

Not surprisingly life has been a little hectic with balancing work, study and relaxing (not that much of that has happened!) So finding time to blog has taken a back seat.

Over the last 5 weeks a number of things have happened though so thought I should share a few highlights:

Board Meetings

We’ve had a couple of Board Meetings with our new director Lance Wiggs with another scheduled for later this week. Lance’s no BS approach is both refreshing and challenging. While it is early days the formalisation of Board Meetings has already provided a discipline that Tracey and I enjoy as we look to grow our business.

New Website

A couple of weeks ago we launched a new Website as the first step in a series of strategic branding steps. Over the last 9 months we have been working with Brian R Richards Limited to build our brand by following an approach similar to Better By Design. The new website consolidated two of our previous offerings in to a single platform on which we will build and deliver future solutions. Keep an eye on the website on the 9th June when we plan to launch our new brand.

ArchiCAD 14

GRAPHISOFT have announced the next version of ArchiCAD so our team is busy preparing for both the international and local release.

My Volcano Story

So did you hear the one about the volcano that disrupted European Travel? If not then I’m not sure where you have been for the last two weeks!

Last Wednesday I was quite happy to arrive in Budapest after 29hrs of smooth travel. I was attending the GRAPHISOFT International Partners Conference – the first in Budapest for fives years, having visited Prague, Garmisch and Malta in the years inbetween.

By Thursday once the conference started talk of the volcano had increased and about 3 people were stuck in the UK and would miss the conference. Still no stress from our end, how long can this thing blow anyway?

Roll on Saturday afternoon as the conference draws to a close and European Airspace is closed and GRAPHISOFT have arranged five buses to transport partners back to Venice, Calais, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Helsinki – a great effort by the Team at GRAPHISOFT, but not so good for the Kiwis, Aussies, United States and Asian Partners.

Our Sunday flight home is, not surprisingly, cancelled and once re-booked we find we have an unexpected 10 days extra time in Budapest!

After much to’ing and fro’ing a plan emerged to get us home as follows:

  • Wednesday depart Budapest on a bus for a 26 hr trip to Athens
  • Fly Athens – Doha – Singapore
  • Stay Overnight in Singapore (where I am writing this from)
  • Fly Singapore – Auckland

So we’ll end up home 4.5 days later than expected (though 6 days earlier than it could have been) and instead of a ‘leisurely’ 29 hr flight total travel time will be 73 hours – yes a touch over 3 days!

26 Hours on a bus was less than fun, but we got to see Serbia and Macedonia by night! Also I took small comfort in hearing that some of our Swedish friends had to endure a 35 hr bus ride to get home.

I expect memories of this Volcano will be discussed at GRAPHISOFT IPC’s for many years to come…

Cadimage Group takes a step forward

As a company we have continually engaged external sources to help us with the ongoing development of our business.

Two years ago we undertook a significant strategic planning exercise with Helen and Greg Cross from Cross Ventures and we are currently working extensively with Brian R Richards with regards to the strategic branding of our international business.

Both of these engagements have been project based engagements which have focused on specific areas of the business. Strategy however, isn’t something that can be simply looked at on a project by project basis and requires constant review and adjustment.

I am therefore pleased to announce that Lance Wiggs has joined the Cadimage Board of Directors. This is a significant step forward for the Cadimage Group as Lance is our first non-executive director and this marks the start of our next growth phase.

Lance brings a wealth of experience from around the globe and has already started contributing to the direction of the business with a full on 3 hours yesterday afternoon to drop him in the deep end.

Tracey and I are really excited about this next period of development for our business and are stoked to welcome Lance on board! (pun intended)

Preparing for 2010…

What a year – this graphic certainly sums up some of my thoughts about 2009!

A year ago I posted my contribution to Xero’s Survival Guide – it is interesting to reread this in the context of what has happened but more importantly a good to chance to review again as we roll into not only a New Year but a new decade.

From a business point of view 2009 for us has been a year of both Survival and Success. Having a business (Graphisoft NZ) heavily reliant on the NZ Building industry has been tough, sales drops of up to 80% in some areas have been a head ache but have really made us focus on growth in new areas. On the flip side of this we are pleased to say that today our international business (Cadimage Tools) has just past our growth target for 2009 so our strategy of building an export business to reduce our reliance on the NZ Building Industry is finally paying off – and just when we needed it to if I may say so!

A year ago I said I was going to blog more – while technically I have it is mostly a result of having 12 months in 2009 as opposed to the 6 months that my blog existed for in 2008! If you look at my ‘blog habits’ you’ll see I blog quite a lot while travelling and as my travelling reduced so did my blogging. I don’t plan to travel as much in 2010 but I am hopefully going to blog more even so.

I also have another new challenge for 2010 and that is the commencement of an NZ Executive MBA at Auckland University which I was recently accepted for. I am really looking forward to this opportunity and while I know it will be tough I think my business and I will be better for it.

In short I am really looking forward to 2010 we have some big plans – keep an eye on my blog to hear how things go!