The 4th Designers 3D CAD Shoot-Out
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The 4th Designers 3D CAD Shoot-Out |
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PRESS RELEASE - June 3, 1999
LOS ANGELES - To the steel drum calypso beat of Caribbean music six Teams of architects set out to design a Resort Clubhouse in front of an audience of hundreds, at the Designers 3D CAD Shootout for Architectural CADD Systems held at A/E/C SYSTEMS in Los Angeles, May 26th. The audience was there because they had the unique opportunity to see their colleagues design the 20,000 square foot building, and produce all the plans, sections, elevations, details, colorful perspectives, stunning renderings, and exciting walk through animations, all in only three hours. Despite producing all the conventional drawings in addition to the beautiful 3D views, none of the Teams did any "drafting" all day, as all of it was produced with the new generation of 3D architectural modeling design software, which is ripping the architectural profession apart as they contend with a paradigm shift to their way of doing their work, changing from drafting lines to being masters of virtual reality.
In addition to the fun of watching real design happen at an accelerated speed, the architects in the audience had a chance to compare the different options for architectural software side by side. While of course the skills and ideas of the designers on the three-architect Teams have an effect on the success of their design, which is part of the fun, there are a number of required elements and "vignettes" (mini-design problems) with required changes which allow judging the architectural software's abilities on a level playing field.
This year's competition, between Teams representing ArchiCAD, AllPlan, ArchiTECH.PC, VectorWorks, DataCAD, and ARRIS, was extremely competitive. Each Team had two architects each with a CADD system, and a third person whose job was to give the audience a running commentary. In the ten minute final presentations each Team gave after the charrette (architectural work marathon) the audience could see that every single Team ended up producing a very attractive building appropriate for the Orlando, Florida site, and that the Teams had fun adding everything from pool bridges and stone arches to gazebos and tiki torches in keeping with the Caribbean theme resort hotel.
The main building design, unknown to the competitors until the first "start your mouses" bell, included spa and health club facilities, a restaurant and kitchen, and several bars and lounges, all wrapped by an extensive freeform pool with a pool bridge the Teams were required to model in detail. The Jury of ten architectural CADD experts used a checklist to make sure every Team not only did all the required drawings but that their designs included all the required spaces. This year every single Team had all the required building spaces and all the building elements - though several Teams got caught up in the "tropical" theme and forgot about the required fireplaces. Outside the main building this year's contest required significant land form work, again which all the Teams did, and all but the DataCAD Team included the extensive pool with swim-up bar and pool bridge. (Don't worry, be happy.)
At the same time, the Teams were asked to demonstrate their solutions, and required changes, to six other vignette mini-design problems. This is where the competition really got "Hot-Hot-Hot". It was in these vignettes that the architectural artificial intelligence in ArchiCAD and ARRIS really helped those Teams pull ahead. The ArchiCAD Team demonstrated how their Teamwork software allowed architects to collaborate on the same building simultaneously in an automatically coordinated way. The ARRIS Team not only showed how their software allows people to collaborate on very large projects, but they stunned the audience with their ArrisView software which allows interactive redlining by many people across the world wide web in addition to dynamic rendered sectioning (which helps everyone involved understand a building design quickly).
In the awards ceremony the next day, it was announced that every single Team placed either first or second in at least one of the 19 categories, however, it was obvious that the really big winners for the event were the ARRIS Team and the ArchiCAD Team, each of whom took 9 "Best of ..." Architectural CADD Awards ("Archies"), with the DataCAD Team winning another category. Particularly interesting was the ArchiCAD Team winning the Anders Prize for best design, and the ARRIS Team for winning the best "Value" category. For the best overall Architectural CADD software, this year, rather than have a grading category, the grading numbers for all the other categories and the vignettes were added to a checklist (to make sure an overall winner didn't skip something and win merely by "glitz") and, while all the Teams did extremely well, the "photo-finish" between the top two was extremely close, with a difference of less than 100 points out of over 16,000 points. The ArchiCAD Team won best overall, and the Architectural CADD Cup, and becomes a new Trustee and current holder of the Architectural CADD Cup.
Also awarded were special certificates to five of the designers who have now done this grueling competition four years in a row - Charlie White, AIA, Robert Anderson, AIA, Ivan Bereznicki, AIA, Issam Chahine, and Rick Morse. Special thanks went to Greg Barriere, AIA, Production Assistant, and to Geoffrey Moore Langdon, AIA, the Producer of the event.
The sponsors of the event were A/E/C SYSTEMS, The Boston Society of Architects, Architectural CADD Consultants, Architecture Magazine, Cadence Magazine, Silicon Graphics, Hewlett Packard, AEC Info and the AEC store.com.
Already challenging for the 5th Design Shootout to be held on June 3, 2000 in Washington, DC at A/E/C SYSTEMS, are the ARRIS Team, and the VectorWorks Team, with others welcome to join the competition against the defending ArchiCAD Team.
All the complete results, and analysis with juror's comments are available online at the web site for the Designers 3D CAD Shootout for Architectural CADD Systems. (There is also an explanation of "CAD" versus "CADD" and other informational bits, so you can see it is NOT a typo.) Also, all the drawings and perspectives the Teams produced will be online, so that you can view them, and then vote for your favorite yourself, all in our online forum. It is all at http://www.architecturalcadd.com/shootout.html