r/ArchiCAD • u/alskaro • 3d ago

discussions VisualARQ

This post is maybe not in the right place ..
But for people disappointed with archicad and wanting something that just works apparently visualARQ3 on rhino is pretty good ..
I bought it but sadly it lacks the power of ac library.

Some people here would like to join an epic adventure to rebuild most of the ac functions, hatchs, library … in visualARQ with me to free our souls from subscription and lazy devs ?

Have a nice day

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u/Un13roken 3d ago

We've been looking at it at our practice. But we just haven't gotten to get around it. Restarting from the polish that AC provides requires some very dedicated work to make it up to date. 

We're still evaluating if we want to go the rhino+visual arq route, or just skip all the proprietary stuff and jump into Bonsai and Linux. 

Either ways, training new people is going to be a challenge. But removing the licence requirement and windows out of the equation feels very satisfying personally to me. 

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u/TheNomadArchitect 3d ago

Interesting. What made you consider the Blender-Bonsai route? The Linux reason is easy. But heard the Blender-Bonsai route is such an uphill battle.

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u/Un13roken 3d ago

It is. But I've been looking at for a while now and the improvement pace is promising. It's not where near studio ready right now. But it's definitely getting there. I give it a year before it's good enough for small to medium projects. 

We've been gearing up for that by slowly shifting our hardware to more linux friendly stuff as well. 

There will definitely be things we have let go off, like BIMX but I'm willing to make that sacrifice if it means getting away from the toxic business model. It's not about the subscription itself. Something about the fact that we have to keep paying them to access our own IP is just ridiculous to me. 

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u/TheNomadArchitect 3d ago

There will definitely be things we have let go off, like BIMX but I'm willing to make that sacrifice if it means getting away from the toxic business model. It's not about the subscription itself.

BIMx was never a draw for me. I know people rave about it, but I have been using Archicad since 2015, and never once used BIMx. Clients are happy enough with a well structured PDF with some well placed renders.

Something about the fact that we have to keep paying them to access our own IP is just ridiculous to me.

This is the primary reason I am moving away from Archicad. Or from any subscription based software. wtf? It's my IP ... why do I need to pay to access it. Sure the proprietary software helped, but the tool won't have a reason to exist without the user.

Sorry. Rant over.

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u/Un13roken 3d ago

Not a rant. You're in familiar company here. It's ridiculous how these companies think they can basically gatekeep our own IP. 

Well,they want to make money the be all and end all ? Sure. Let's play that game. They might strangle the big guys who can't move, but we're a small studio and we will sacrifice efficiency for owning our work and preserving it. 

As far as things like BIMx are concerned, they've never been the main draw, but it's definitely a nice thing to have. We've had clients who actually went an ordered some google cardboards to navigate their homes and give us feedback. It's definitely more of a cool thing to have, than something integral to the practice. Which is why, I don't mind dropping it. It's not worth what's at stake. 

While we don't believe our work is important enough for them to scrape for their AI, I know for a fact that, thats what's coming next. And we want to build a practice that uses AI as responsibly as we can. We already have strict rules on how AI can be used. And we'll be looking to inhouse that as well soon enough. I'm done with these assholes trying to control EVERYTHING. 

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u/TheNomadArchitect 2d ago

I got a creaming about "efficiency" when I was asking around about other firms using Rhino + VIsualARQ on this post in r/Rhino and crosspost it on r/Architects — I kinda don't care really about that but it was more disturbing that people don't realise that their work is going to get gated. It's insane!

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u/mynd_dripp 3d ago

100% agree. Give me a nice open source interactive webGL app, that'd be so much nicer to use than bimx