At Graphisoft’s 40th anniversary event, held at its Budapest headquarters, the company set out a roadmap for its technology development for the first time.
When it comes to telling the world about new capabilities developed for Archicad, Graphisoft has traditionally done this once a year, at the launch event of the latest release.
Other than for beta testers, the focus of Archicad development is usually a surprise. This year we had something very different. We were treated to not just a whole new release, but also four roadmaps of focus areas spanning 2022 to 2025.
The change probably has a lot to do with CEO, Huw Roberts, who has been steadily making changes to the way Graphisoft communicates and goes to market. There is also the fact that there is industry concern about the development futures of Archicad’s biggest competitor, Revit, and the fact that Archicad is undergoing significant software architecture changes to better prepare it for tomorrow’s hybrid computing requirements, as well as broader, more multi-disciplinary vertical developments.
Graphisoft Establishes a Strategic Multilane Road Map to Enhance Collaboration
1. Building the Future with BIM – Graphisoft Establishes
a Strategic Multilane Road Map to Enhance
Collaboration
Millions of buildings have been designed by Graphisoft customers worldwide over the past 40 years
using the company’s robust BIM software, which is built with the single-minded goal of enabling
teams to produce outstanding architecture.
Over the course of the previous year, Graphisoft has worked tirelessly to produce a number of new
features and improvements that adhere to that goal. Graphisoft has unveiled its new vision and
strategic roadmap at the online launch of its latest solutions and services, including Archicad 26,
BIMx, BIMcloud, and DDScad
2. Graphisoft Unveils a Strategic Multilane Road Map to
Enhance Collaboration
GRAPHISOFT, the software company also celebrated its 40th anniversary. At Graphisoft Park—the
company’s headquarters in Buda—attendees gathered outside with Aperol spritzes before CEO Huw
Roberts took the stage. Roberts was joined by founder Gábor Bojár and chairman of the board and
former CEO Viktor Várkonyi as images from the company’s 40-year history shuffled on-screen behind
them. Before the cake was cut, guests were given a preview of the company’s strategic road map.
Graphisoft also released updates for additional programs, including improvements for Graphisoft
Learn and Graphisoft Community.
Rather than leave users to wade through YouTube tutorials for their software—as is standard with
some platforms—Graphisoft aims to direct users to its in-house training, ensuring a sufficient
instruction level.
Graphisoft has long been one of the biggest names in BIM software designed for architects and
others involved in project planning and design stages. Just last month, they celebrated their 40th
anniversary of operation in this space, having been founded back in Budapest in 1982 by Gábor Bojár
and the late István Gábor Tari.
In celebrating this milestone anniversary, they not only are taking stock of what they’ve been able to
accomplish in these four decades of service, but also continuing to develop impressive new offerings,
including the newest version of its flagship Archicad product along with BIMx, BIMcloud,
and DDScad. These tools can help accomplish a lot of different tasks, but when talking about things
like BIMx and BIMcloud, one of the most important functions is the improvement of seamless
collaboration.
Collaboration has always been important, but in recent years we are seeing an uptick in buy-in for
this concept, as well as additional needs for remote collaboration brought on by the COVID-19
pandemic. Because of that, and with the company celebrating this anniversary, we reached out to
Graphisoft Product Marketing Manager Carlos Cordeiro, who was kind enough to speak to us about
collaboration in general in the AEC industry, and what the company is doing to address these needs.
3. Roadmap to Growth
The roadmap for Graphisoft is divided into several lanes, including those for architecture,
multidisciplinary design, design team collaboration, and productive ecosystems, each of which has
exciting new features, capabilities, and improvements planned. Design, documentation, visualization,
and cooperation are still the major priorities in architecture. Future priority areas and strategic
benchmarks include:
• Providing tools that enable architects to maintain their attention on their designs while
enhancing project efficiency through better information management.
• Offering creative new features that manage and traverse a variety of design alternatives,
architects can investigate more “what if” scenarios during the design process.
• Working on highly drafted details and navigating designs with even greater speed and
performance — regardless of project scope or complexity.
• Increasing the existing robust information layer in Archicad to better incorporate simulation
and analysis into the design process.
Multi-Disciplinary Design
A Multidisciplinary design begins with OPEN BIM and advances to Integrated Design. This year,
Graphisoft boosted its capabilities by adding the newly merged DDScad capabilities for Building
Systems engineering. The following are upcoming focus areas and strategic milestones:
• Integrate BIM data systems across disciplines even more.
• Integrate data and workflows to expand the geographic reach of DDScad.
• Integrate user experiences across multidisciplinary teams through shared capabilities, aligned
interfaces, and simplified training and configuration.
• DDScad MEP experience is fully integrated, with updated interfaces and many shared
capabilities.
• Integrate the management of multidisciplinary libraries, shared resources, templates, and
standards across the enterprise.
4. Design Team Collaboration
BIMcloud and BIMx serve as the foundation for design team collaboration, while OPEN BIM and BCF
and connections to common data environments are used to extend out (CDEs). Users of Archicad
already enjoy the unrivaled collaboration between themselves, and OPEN BIM and simple
information exchanges allow working with nearly any other program or team as well as with other
teams straightforward. Future priority areas and strategic benchmarks include:
• Streamlined integration across teams in multiple disciplines, with new capabilities such as
dynamic hyper-model publishing, on-demand, cross-team, as a service — and expanded
connectivity with other CDEs.
• Focus on dynamic team and information management, as well as responsive integration with
CDEs.
• Support enterprise team management, multi-tiered and nested team structures, and system
administration process orchestration.
Graphisoft Community for Productivity
With the Graphisoft Forward service and benefits program, access to know-how through Graphisoft
Learn, and sharing knowledge and best practices with peer users and experts through Graphisoft
Community, Graphisoft’s services and benefits ensure and maximize the productivity of Graphisoft’s
users’ ecosystems. The following are upcoming focus areas and strategic milestones:
• Simplify design ecosystem administration by improving licensing and entitlement systems,
product upgrade workflows, and expanding integration with third-party enhancements that
extend Graphisoft’s product capabilities.
• Provide customers with an ‘instant’ upgrade experience, including templates, resources,
configuration, and data formats.
• Provide enterprise management of all aspects of the design ecosystem in accordance with
the Design Team Collaboration roadmap.
With the release of Archicad 26, Graphisoft also indicated that its innovative Adaptive Hybrid
Framework technological architecture will enable a quicker and more nimble high-quality delivery of
5. new capabilities, features, products, and services spanning the desktop, cloud services, and mobile
devices.
Graphisoft envisions a world where structures improve people’s lives and where these buildings are
developed and constructed by multi-disciplinary digital teams who collaborate efficiently.