On June 4th, Graphisoft unveiled a new year of products at the first keynote for its Key Client Conference in Las Vegas. The latest version of its Archicad software was the star of the show, but imaging improvements and new partnerships were also discussed.
The banner for Graphisoft’s newly-demoed Archicad 23, released at the firm’s Las Vegas Key Client conference. The background features a model of the nearly-built Irina Viner-Usmanova Rhythmic Gymnastics Center, created with Graphisoft’s software (Image courtesy of Graphisoft.)
The company also highlighted the update to its BIMx Lab app, which means that users can open large projects even when on devices with limited memory, like tablets. It uses a method called geometry streaming, which loads the model as the users progress through it, meaning that the app doesn't need to open the entire model at the same time. To demonstrate this feature, the company's representatives opened a project with 50 million polygons, a model large enough to crash the previous version of the software.
Finally, Graphisoft announced its new strategic agreement with Epic Games, with relation to Epic’s video game engine, Unreal. The partnership will feature a smoother link between Archicad models and Unreal's Twinmotion engine. Released last year, Twinmotion specifically targets architecture, engineering and construction professionals seeking professional-quality visualization of their models. The new link includes real-time ray tracing for more natural-looking models and the ability to bring Archicad models in by direct link. Twinmotion will be made freely available to all Archicad 23 subscribers.
Graphisoft plans to begin shipping Archicad 23 by this fall.