Revit AIO vs ArchiCAD IFC Part 1 Rev1

ArchiCAD is made by Architects for Architects so Revit is made by Engineers for

Engineers? There is no denying that ArchiCAD looks better in presentations even I have
3 years of experience in Revit. Layers seems old fashion but it is quite customizable and
is as good as Revit subtractive method, filtering by parameters. The main problem is
multi-disciplinary workflow.

In the Philippines, architects and their draftsman does all drawings from architectural to
electronics. If the architect does ArchiCAD for architectural, Revit could be used for
structural and MEP. Or if you want to avoid the behemoth Autodesk, should you learn
Tekla Structures for structural and DDS-CAD for MEP? Structural in ArchiCAD seems
feasible but MEP is horrible, not even close to Revit's engineers’ tools. These days,
Autodesk is mostly focusing on improving engineering tools in Revit as we have seen in
Revit 2020.1 update. Autodesk still don't want to add more text features, custom
schedules with images, solid operations, family creation and more for years now. Well,
ArchiCAD update view is still not better and learning GDL sucks. I'm liking ArchiCAD
better than Revit even though I have more experience in Revit.

Revit All-in-one package is very attractive workflow. Revit is also much popular in
practice in the Philippines but younger architect leans on ArchiCAD. It is also much
easier to learn since the commands are similar. Disciplines are separated in toolbars
and views. What sucks the most is the hard-coded discipline-based visibility/graphics
settings but is tolerable. With one file or separate Revit files, we can expect the views
are consistent to each other such as plumbing lines having single lines or categorised
accordingly. I'm still not sure if IFC can do that but that part is unimportant anyway.

ArchiCAD is specialised in doing architectural. Whilst it can do structural and MEP

drawings, the integration for such disciplines like analytical model, steel connections,
rebars, electrical, duct and pipe flow calculations seems unattainable automatically
and should be done manually. Although these features should not be a concern for
architects. ArchiCAD IFC interoperability is better than Revit so working with other BIM
capable software should be a breeze. ArchiCAD and Revit can be paired via IFC but
that means two software. Using Tekla Structures and DDS-CAD means three software.
The software cost and training time will be the limitations. It is important to assess the
actual need of the level of BIM model to the workflow.

Why is this part 1? It's because I will be starting to do a test project in ArchiCAD and use
the native tools for structural and MEP. If it is unachievable, I will use Revit's other
disciplines.