Graphisoft, the leading Building Information Modeling (BIM) solutions provider for architecture, unveiled its vision and strategic roadmap at the global online launch of its latest solutions and services, including Archicad 26, its award-winning flagship product, BIMx, BIMcloud, and DDScad.
Graphisoft was founded in Budapest in 1982 by Gábor Bojár and the late István Gábor Tari with an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for delivering value through innovation.
Graphisoft released its first commercial software in 1984 – and right from the beginning with coordinated 2D and 3D, Archicad has driven industry innovation ever since. Its “Virtual Building” approach pioneered the road to what would many years later be called Building Information Modeling, or simply, “BIM.”
“As we mark Graphisoft’s 40th anniversary, we pause with gratitude to reflect on how far we have come — now as a global leader in our industry and serving users in more than 120 countries with 29 localized versions and millions of buildings designed with Archicad,” said Huw Roberts, CEO, Graphisoft. “But as proud as we are of our past, we are even more excited about our future. The entrepreneurial spirit that inspired our founders and fueled our growth continues to shape our approach to addressing the challenges and opportunities our customers face today. We remain focused on understanding our users, their needs and aspirations, and on delivering great products and services to help them achieve their best, and to create great architecture,” he added.
Graphisoft’s Vision, Mission, and Strategy
Graphisoft believes in a world where buildings make people’s lives better, and where these buildings are designed and delivered by digitalized multi-disciplinary teams working together easily and effectively.
To help realize the vision, Graphisoft’s mission is ‘Empowering teams to create great architecture.’ The strategy to fulfill that mission is to deliver exceptional software, with integrated services, knowledge and know-how, benefits, and support — so that architects and multi-disciplinary design teams can maximize their design excellence.
Graphisoft’s Roadmap to Continued Growth and Success
Graphisoft’s roadmap consists of multiple lanes — for architecture, multi-disciplinary design, design team collaboration, and productive ecosystems — each with plans for exciting new features, capabilities, and enhancements. Architecture remains focused on design, documentation, visualization, and collaboration. Upcoming focus areas and planned strategic milestones include:
- Delivering capabilities that help architects stay focused on their design, through better management of information that increase efficiency across projects.
- Providing innovative new capabilities that help manage and navigate an array of design options, through which architects can explore greater ‘what if’ scenarios within the design process.
- Navigating designs with even greater speed and performance and working on highly crafted details — regardless of the scope or complexity of the project.
- Expanding Archicad’s already powerful information layer to further integrate analysis and simulation into the design process.
Multi-disciplinary design starts with OPEN BIM and moves forward with Integrated Design, expanded this year with Graphisoft’s newly merged DDScad capabilities for Building Systems engineering. Upcoming focus areas and planned strategic milestones include:
- Further integrate BIM data systems amongst disciplines.
- Integrate data and workflows and broaden DDScad’s geographic reach.
- Integrate user experiences across multi-disciplinary teams, with shared capabilities, aligned interfaces, and streamlined training and configuration.
- Fully integrated MEP experience with DDScad, with updated interfaces and many shared capabilities.
- Integrate enterprise-wide management of multi-disciplinary libraries, shared resources, templates, and standards.
Design Team Collaboration is centered around BIMcloud and BIMx, reaching out with OPEN BIM and BCF, and connecting to Common Data Environments (CDEs). Archicad users already have unmatched collaboration amongst themselves, and OPEN BIM and easy information exchanges make working alongside virtually any application and with any other team seamless. Upcoming focus areas and planned strategic milestones include:
- Tighter integration across teams in multiple disciplines with new capabilities such as dynamic publishing of hyper-models, on-demand, cross-team, as a service — and extended connectivity with other CDEs.
- Focus on dynamic management of teams and their information, and responsive integration with CDEs.
- Support enterprise management of teams, multi-tiered and nested team structures, and orchestrating the administration processes across systems.
Finally, Graphisoft’s services and benefits ensure and maximize the productivity of Graphisoft’s users’ ecosystems — with the Graphisoft Forward service and benefits program, access to know-how through Graphisoft Learn, and sharing knowledge and best practices with peer users and experts through Graphisoft Community. Upcoming focus areas and planned strategic milestones include:
- Simplify the administration of the design ecosystem — including enhancements to licensing and entitlement systems, product upgrade workflows, and expanded integration with third-party enhancements that extend Graphisoft’s product capabilities.
- Deliver an ‘instant’ upgrade experience for customers — including templates, resources, configuration, and data formats.
- In alignment with the Design Team Collaboration roadmap, provide enterprise management of all aspects of the design ecosystem.
Graphisoft also noted that its unique Adaptive Hybrid Framework technology architecture will enable faster and more nimble high-quality delivery of new capabilities, features, products, and services spanning the desktop, cloud services, and mobile devices beginning with Archicad 26.
“In short, our strategy is to apply continuous innovation through an Adaptive Hybrid Framework, to flexibly deliver great capabilities in stable, easy-to-use, future-proof solutions for all design disciplines in integrated teams,” said Zsolt Kerecsen, Vice President, Software Success at Graphisoft.
Graphisoft — Key Milestones
1982 — Graphisoft is founded in Budapest by Gabor Bojar and Istvan Gabor Tari with an entrepreneurial spirit, and a passion for delivering value through innovation.
1984 — Graphisoft releases its first commercial software – and right from the beginning with coordinated 2D and 3D, Archicad has driven industry innovation ever since. With the “Virtual Building” approach pioneering the road to what would later be called “BIM.”
1997 — Graphisoft introduces “Teamwork,” allowing multiple people to work on the same model simultaneously, and with “BIM Server” as its next-generation in 2009, and then “BIMcloud” in 2014 and most recently with “BIMcloud Software as a Service” in 2022, this technology continues to provide an incredible high-performance scalable solution for integrating BIM teams.
2009 — Graphisoft releases what would be called “Virtual Building Explorer” for Archicad 13. Updated and renamed “BIMx” in 2011, this introduced Graphisoft’s unique hyper-model approach, providing a highly engaging and interactive experience with BIM. Award-winning BIMx is now available on iOS and Android phones and tablets, the desktop, and even through a simple browser providing a Hyper-model experience for even the largest and most complex projects on virtually any device.
2020 — Graphisoft introduces “Integrated Design” — and first demonstrated this game-changing, shared-model, real-time collaboration approach for architects and structural engineers working together. This new technology-based workflow even more tightly integrates the work across multiple design disciplines. Today there are 16 different structural analysis software solutions using Integrated Design with Archicad around the world.
2022 — Graphisoft and Data Design System (now Graphisoft Building Systems) merge to add full Mechanical, Engineering, and Plumbing (MEP) capabilities to the Graphisoft ecosystem.
