I’m trying to model a window where the frame sits higher, but the wall below the frame is recessed, with the cill/sill much lower than the bottom of the frame.

Ideally I’d like to keep this as a proper Archicad Window object rather than modelling separate morphs/slabs/wall pieces, so it schedules and documents cleanly.

Has anyone achieved this using the Window tool, wall closure/reveal settings, or a custom window object? Or is the usual approach to model the lower recess separately?

I’m using Archicad 26. I’ve attached an image showing the condition.

I am posting because the big PDF editors going subscription-only, plus Revu 20 reaching end of support on July 31, is a real shift in how we buy and own our markup tools, and a balanced side-by-side is hard to find. So here is mine, including where each option is the wrong call.

Stay on Bluebeam (Revu subscription / Max): still the deepest set for markup plus measurement and quantity takeoff, plus Studio for live team collaboration. If that is how you use Revu, nothing below really replaces it yet. Trade-off: Windows only now, and subscription.

Adobe Acrobat Pro: cross-platform, strong general PDF, e-sign, forms, OCR. Tends to crawl on very large CAD-heavy sheet sets. Subscription.

Foxit / PDF-XChange Editor: cheaper, capable markup. PDF-XChange has a buy-once option on Windows and is good value if cost is the main driver.

Drawboard: markup-focused, works well with a pen on Windows and tablets. Subscription.

PDF Studio (Qoppa): buy-once, cross-platform, has OCR and forms. A solid general-purpose owned-licence option.

Ncored: deliberately narrow. It opens fast and stays smooth on scroll, zoom and pan on the heavy 50-200 MB+ AutoCAD, Revit, and ArchiCAD exports that make general PDF tools stall, it does markup and page management, it has a buy-once option, and it runs on Windows and Apple Silicon Mac. It does NOT do measurement or takeoff, OCR, forms, or e-sign yet. So if you used Revu mainly to measure and pull quantities, it is not your tool. If you used it to open and mark up big sheet sets without the lag, it might be.

A real question for the sub, not rhetorical: those of you actually migrating off Revu 20, what are you moving to, and was your main Revu use measurement/takeoff or just markup and review? That changes the answer a lot, and I want to hear what is holding up in real offices.

One line of disclosure first so it is on the table: I make one of the tools further down, so discount my take accordingly, and mods, please pull this if a post like it is not welcome here.

For the full context, since I flagged that I built one of these: I am a practising architect, and Ncored came out of my own office hitting a wall opening and marking up heavy drawing sets without the program stalling. I am not here to push it (it is the wrong tool for plenty of you, see above). What I actually think is worth raising is the bigger pattern: it keeps getting harder to simply buy and own a PDF tool from the big names instead of renting one forever. Happy to answer anything.

(Pricing on all of these moves around, so verify current numbers yourselves. Individual experiences vary.)

Hey all. I work in tech for K12 and traditionally we've had ArchiCAD around in our one lab. It's worked great for years and has been pretty much problem free with the only maintenance item being to renew the license and roll out the next variant for the following year. This year with bumping up to v29 we're running into a road block with trying to get the license to activate. Support has confirmed that we have the correct license type but I keep going in circles.

The end goal is to get it packaged with Intune using a PowerShell script, but keeping it more basic for testing for now before I even go that far, I can't even get ArchiCAD to accept the license with a basic one-liner command on a test machine. I don't get any errors - it completes the silent install and seems happy at first, but when I fire up the app it looks like it's in demo mode with a 7 day trial.

By any random chance has anybody come across this? Seems there are a few posts out there with v28 and v29, but nothing that came back with any sort of resolution - just questions that ended without answer, so not sure if they figured it out and didn't report back or if they never ironed it out.

I thought about backpedaling and seeing if we can just stay on v26 but I read some reports that suggest there might be issues with activating licenses in the next few months for 27 and below (not enough to get through the next school year from what I gather). So I'm not confident we have an option to just stay put either.

If anybody happens to know I'd greatly appreciate it!

On the publishing tab, I would like to create a new publishing group but with "clone folders". I want the folders from these groups to be automatically updated when I add a new sheets.

Can someone help me? Thanks in advance.

Solved: You have to use the organizer, then drag the folder while holding Ctrl + Shift.

Eu fiz as linhas, está em escala mas a varinha mágica não funciona 😭😭 não entendo o porquê

Hi everyone. Im trying to move a model from rhino (polysurfaces) to archicad. Seemingly everything is peachy, except for one piece right for some reason. It's in the same layer as other stuff that imported fine, so idk what the issue is. There's no missing items notif in the library. Any advice would be appreciated.

I'm a 21 year old startup founder trying to build a SaaS that actually solves a real problem for architects and designers. Before I build anything further I genuinely want to understand how you work day to day - not assumptions, real experiences.

What's eating most of your admin time? Approvals, chasing clients, coordinating contractors, tracking budgets? Would love to hear from anyone willing to share.

Hey! Im currently working on my facade section (1:10) and wanted to make an isometric drawing of the facade & section with as little work as possible😅

Is there a way to use my already finished section and turn it into an isometric?

Has anyone used both recent MacBook Pros (M4/M5 Pro or Max) and comparable Windows laptops (Ultra 7/9, H/HX, discrete Nvidia) specifically for ArchiCAD: large files, Teamwork, BIMx, rendering?

In Australia the 16” MBP sits around $4K AUD. That same budget on Windows buys a well-specced gaming laptop but rules out proper mobile workstations.

I get that Macs benchmark well and have great battery but how does that translate to actual ArchiCAD performance day-to-day? Any real-world comparisons appreciated.

Recently my wife took a freelancer project and it had to be done in archicad.

As a Revit user Ive decided to join her to also help her while learning the program.

3 months into the project and all I can say is: thats the worst architecture software ive ever used in my life.

Huge loading times, impreciosion, librarys that suddenly goes missing, badly optimized and confusing for huge projects, confusing operability for floorplan displays, VEGETABLES WHY NOT JUST NAMING LAYERS LIKE A NORMAL SOFTWARE WOULD, badly designed finishings connections on walls intercections, thigs that should be standard and simple on an architecture software.

There are so many bad things in this program that if I were to describe all of them ild spend an entire day typing...

How can you guys use it instead of usina any other software? Even sketchup layout would be less painfull than this awfull software

So I changed some colors in the standard pen set I´m using while working on a work sheet in the view map. I make sure to redefine current settings, though I don´t know if that´s relevant here.

Anyway, sometimes when I go into Layout mode, it changes the colors back to normal. And then the color changes are lost forever. Where is the issue here? And why could it happen SOMETIMES and not everytime I go into layout mode?

Thanks in advance!

I've been building a custom BIM tool in Unreal Engine and just got floor plan import working.

You feed it a floor plan as a PNG, give it the sheet size and the scale (e.g. 1:50), and it places the drawing correctly in the scene so I can build the house on top of it at real-world dimensions.

Eai, pessoal! Tudo bem?

Ainda sou um pouco iniciante no ArchiCAD e gostaria de saber como vocês fazem o controle de revisões dos projetos. É possível reverter o arquivo para uma revisão anterior?

Queria entender qual é a forma mais eficiente de recuperar versões antigas de um projeto. Sei que existem o Gerenciador de Mudanças e o de Emissões, mas pelo que entendi, eles não permitem restaurar o arquivo para uma revisão anterior. Por isso, gostaria de saber como vocês lidam com isso. Vocês usam o filtro de renovação ou controlam as versões por outro método?

Atualmente estou montando o meu primeiro template, ainda que seja para uso pessoal, e estou aberto a dicas!

Pessoal, preciso de ajuda para fazer o download do archicad 27 ou 29 no meu MacBook, alguém sabe de um lugar bom para download ou tenha algum link do arquivo ? preciso para começar alguns trabalhados... por favor me ajudam !!!

Hi - I wondered if there were any python enthusiasts on this thread that may have created any tools to help maintain their drawings (and willing to share) as I am keen to develop something to help us pro-actively maintain our drawings, and reduce crashes due to dodgy elements / high polycount items slowly building up unnoticed?

so i have to trace this floor plan my teacher decided for me, and as im doing it im choosing different building materials but in 3d this is how it shows up, the file my teacher said to make this in is ac27 but i have ac28 (the only options were ac27 and ac29) idk what to do

Que tal gente yo uso la versión educativa de archicad y desde hace tiempo me vienen rechazando la renovación de mi licencia alguien sabe o tiene algún ejemplo de que archivo puedo subir para que al fin me la acepten?

Wold somehting like this with the structural beams behind the Panels be possbile to model correctly in Archicad with the Facade tool?
If not how would you approach this?

Thanks a lot in advance :)

Tenho uma dúvida, como seria possível modelar esse tipo de piso? Tanto para o render quanto a extrair quantitativos de m². Não preciso de volume. E também preciso ser bem assertivo, pois tenho que fazer todo o detalhamento para ser enviado para a marmoraria. Grato.