ArchiCAD 16 -- BIM Components at Your Fingertips

BUDAPEST, Hungary, May 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- GRAPHISOFT® announced today ArchiCAD® 16, the latest version of its premium BIM design software for architects. ArchiCAD 16 introduces a comprehensive ecosystem of solutions to ease the creation, sharing, and finding of custom BIM Components. Built-in Energy Evaluation turns ArchiCAD 16 into the "greenest" BIM solution available on the market today.

"Building projects – by their nature – contain numerous custom building components and structures that may require modeling capabilities beyond the standard BIM tools," said Laszlo Vertesi, VP of Products at GRAPHISOFT. "ArchiCAD 16 introduces direct modeling capabilities and cloud-integration to help users create and find the custom objects, components, and structures they need to make their BIM models complete," he continued.

MORPH TOOL – Redefining Modeling Freedom for BIM

Custom objects, components, and structures require a tool with extraordinary modeling flexibility. ArchiCAD 16 introduces direct modeling capabilities into the native BIM environment with its brand new MORPH™ tool. MORPH allows element creation with any custom geometry in an intuitive graphical way, featuring popular modeling techniques such as push & pull. MORPH elements can be created from scratch simply by drawing a 3D polygon or by converting any existing ArchiCAD BIM element. The MORPH tool is an optimal solution for creating custom BIM components, custom structures, and custom elements of the built environment as well as custom-designed building interiors.

BIMcomponents.com – Cloud-search for BIM Components

Building components is one of the most dynamically developing segments of the BIM industry. ArchiCAD's parametric GDL technology has been a powerful tool for professionals to create "intelligent" building components. ArchiCAD 16 fundamentally changes the possibilities  the average user has to obtain custom BIM Components for their BIM projects. ArchiCAD's new modeling capabilities, connected with the cloud-based BIM Component database allow users to create, search, upload, and download custom BIM components of their choice. The fully-integrated web portal makes sharing BIM components a core community function. BIMcomponents.com also provides a central "marketplace" for all GDL objects to directly reach ArchiCAD users when they need those objects the most.

SUSTAINABILITY – Industry-first Fully BIM-integrated Energy Evaluation

In today's environment, sustainability is an imperative for all building projects. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the main decisions influencing a building's sustainability features are made by the architects and not by the building systems engineers. GRAPHISOFT continues to innovate in "green" as well, uniquely offering the best workflow for sustainable design, integrated in its BIM authoring tool. The built-in Energy Evaluation functionality of ArchiCAD 16 is similar to the former standalone EcoDesigner™ product, but is based on entirely new technology (e.g. zone-boundary based building model geometry analysis, analytic weather data input option, etc.). This technology allows architects to perform reliable dynamic energy evaluation of their BIM model within ArchiCAD, relying on BIM geometry analysis and accurate hour-by-hour online weather data of the building's location.

Together with ArchiCAD 16, GRAPHISOFT also delivers important workflow and productivity updates to its growing portfolio of solutions. These include an upgraded BIM Server™, Cloud-integrated model sharing service for BIMx users with an active maintenance contract, and support for the IFC 2x3 Coordination View Version 2.0 for facilitating OPEN BIM. ArchiCAD 16 will be released on May 30, 2012, with shipment to customers beginning within 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 2012. For more information about ArchiCAD 16, please visit: http://www.graphisoft.com/archicad. For a live demonstration of ArchiCAD 16, please register for the upcoming "BIM Components at Your Fingertips" webinar on June 19, 2012.

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 Server™, the world's first real-time BIM collaboration environment, and the GRAPHISOFT EcoDesigner™, 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. GRAPHISOFT® has been part of the Nemetschek Group, since its acquisition in 2007.

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