Designers 3D CAD Shoot-Out

The Designers 3D CAD Shoot-Out

Official Results of

The Designers 3D CADD Shootout

for Architectural CADD Systems

held in Boston on 11/18/98

at the World Trade Center Boston

sponsored by

Architectural CADD Consultants

The Boston Society of Architects

A/E/C Systems

BOSTON - Congratulations to the ARRIS Team, overall winner of the 1998 Designers 3D CAD Shootout for Architectural CADD Systems, and now holder of the Architectural CADD Cup - a trophy signifying excellence in architectural design software. The ARRIS Team of three architects with two networked computers used the ARRIS architectural design software made by Sigma Direct, and defeated nine other Teams of architects, each using a different CADD software. The ARRIS Team also garnered fourteen Architectural CADD Awards. The Architectural CADD Awards are another twenty categories of voting on various aspects of the architectural CADD software and of the Team's performance that day. Their six gold medals included not only wins for visualization such as Design and Presentation and Animation, but also Fastest/easiest floorplans, elevations, sections and Real Production Drawing.

The ArchiCAD Team came in second in the overall standings for the Architectural CADD Cup, but managed to be our top medal winner in gold, silver, and bronze Architectural CADD Awards. Their five gold medals include the coveted categories of Easy to Use and architectural parametrics of Walls/Windows/Doors or how well does the software allow for easy design changes. They were also the top winner in the categories of Network collaboration, showing the strenght of ArchiCAD Teamwork, as well as Conceptual Design Space Planning and Symbol Libraries.

The MicroStation TriForma Team came in third in the overall standings as well as in the Architectural CADD Awards, winning two gold medals in visualization, Full Rendering and VRML (Virtual Reality for the Web), as well as another gold for being the best at the important practical ability of Importing and Exporting Drawing and Image Files.

Other top performers in this years Design Shootout were the AllPlan Team, which did the most impressive job with the required stairs as well as turning the scan into a real 3D site model, and had the best quick color perspectives, and the ArchiTECH.PC / SoftCAD 3D Team, which had the best Design, did the best job with the required sculptural 3D elements (a detailed ships wheel) and also had the most powerful automatic roof generator.

The ten Teams competing were architects using ARRIS, DenebaCAD, MiniCAD/VectorWorks, ArchiCAD Teamwork, MicroStation TriForma, ArchiTECH.PC/SoftCAD3D, DataCAD, AutoCAD Architectural Desktop, BuildersCAD, and AllPlan.

What these Teams of architects had to do was to design a surprise project from scratch and produce all the plans, sections, elevations, details, perspectives, animations, and so on all in three hours while a gallery of spectator architects watched and voted on their performance. The project this year was for an Entertainment Complex of some 80,000 square feet on Pier 15 in New York next to South Street Seaport. The four story structure was to include five different kinds of restaurants (a four star restaurant, a microbrewery pub, a cybercafe, a dance club, function rooms), a marina for 25 boats, and an outdoor amphitheater for 800 people. All the Teams finished the conceptual/schematic level of design detail called for in the competition, and most of the Teams went further, producing detailed design development floorplans and models for entire complex. All the top Teams even had furniture in their animations and perspectives of the microbrewery pub. Additionally, as they were working on this main building, each Team had six more mini-design problems they had to do in front of us, such as designing a custom stair, roof, and so on. These "vingette interview" problems were very telling in that it quickly showed which programs were easier to design with for various types of design. Finally, each Team did a nine minute final presentation on all their work, after which they were questioned by the jury of ten architectural CADD experts, and then evaluated by not only the jury but also the audience of several hundred.

The Teams were evaluated not just on their software but also on their performance that day during those three hours of work. Thus architects can see what is really achievable with a given software in a limited period of time, as opposed to lists of features and as opposed to totally finished work that could take days or weeks to accomplish. That the design team can make a real difference by being organized, working well together, giving a coherent presentation, and producing a good design, helps the competition be fun and attract real design architect users, as the attending architects really want to see other architects working with the software not just sales demonstrations.

This year there were several significant surprises in the results for everyone attending. The ArchiTECH.PC / SoftCAD 3D Team truly did a wonderful design for the site, and was one of only two Teams who even layed out the marina, did a fabulous presentation out to videotape (before the end of the 3 hours), did very well with the mini-design problems, was one of the four easiest to use programs, and even is one of the four lowest cost programs in the competition, yet, through their presentations the jury and audience could tell that the interlinking abilities (networking and file compatibility) was not as strong as the others, knocking it down to 6th in the overall ratings. Another surprise was the AutoCAD Architectural Desktop Team, which many people thought was favored to win the whole competition beforehand, since the number one CADD company Autodesk was improving their flagship AutoCAD 14 with true architectural design abilities very much along the requirements of the Design Shootout, who ended up finishing only in front of a Team that had severe hardware crashes. In their final presentation the AutoCAD Team mentioned that their plan to get around the one-floor limit of their software was to run two copies of AutoCAD simultaneously, but that the three floor requirement of this years design problem caused problems and crashes that lost them a lot of precious time. A "winning momemt" for the AllPlan Team was when they showed how easily and flawlessly they designed and modified the custom stair that we asked for (then animating it fully rendered). The winning moment for the MicroStation TriForma Team was when they pulled up finished renderings of the interior of their entertainment pier which included views of the city in the distance. For the ArchiCAD Team there was no single moment, just a continual demonstration that whatever we asked for was virtually effortless, whether it was changing one type of door to another or collaborating on a network or file transfering to or from other programs. For the ARRIS Team there clearly was a "winning moment" when they used a dynamic virtual section slice ability in a rendered perspective with which they showed that they had indeed designed a complex and comprehensive building - to code - right in front of us right down to all the fixtures in the bathrooms, which stunned the audience. They also showed sample construction documents which switch to the appropriate section, elevation, or detail just by clicking on the drawing note - as all architectural CADD of the future should.

All the rest of the results are online at the Design Shootout Web site at http://www.architecturalcadd.com/shootout.html

Additionally, all the drawings, renderings, and animations the Teams did are also available there for everyone to view. You can also give your own opinion about the Teams, their performance, their software, or make suggestions for the next Design Shootout with the online comments forum you will find there. In fact, in some ways the Design Shootout is still continuing as each Team as well as their numerous advocate users worldwide are adding their particular spin in the online comments, so you are welcome to view the results and join in.

Next year the event moves to an international venue, as it joins the premiere exposition for architectural CADD - the A/E/C Systems Exposition - which in 1999 will be in Los Angeles. The event will take place on Wednesday May 27th in an amphitheater similar to the one we used in Boston. Since we are shifting this year to a summer schedule we now have less than six months to go so preparations are already well afoot.

Thank you again to everyone who helped me put this all together, and congratulations to all our Architectural CADD Award winners especially the new current Architectural CADD Cup holder Charlie White of the ARRIS Team. Actually all ten of these represented CADD programs are the top ten of a much larger field so all of them should be proud of being able to finish such a rigorously challenging design project. I am sure that in particular VectorWorks and Architectural Desktop are raring to go for vindication on the next Design Shootout. See you in LA.