ArchiCAD Start Edition 2009 began shipping at the end of January. It's the winter treat that Graphisoft releases each year, sprinkled with exciting new features to fill the needs of practitioners in small to mid size firms with an affordable BIM (Building Information Modeling) solution. It's not quite like the annual release of Beaujolais nouveau in France but we do have a number of people that have waited in anticipation of the release and, unlike the wine, ArchiCAD Start Edition is based on a mature platform.
The latest release picks up many of the finer features from ArchiCAD 12 including speed (multi-core processor support), 3D Documents, Fill Enhancements and improvement in Stairmaker. At $1995 it's less then half the cost of ArchiCAD 12 and other BIM tools making it an exceptionally affordable tool to get started. Should you later wish to move to the full version of ArchiCAD there is a convenient upgrade path.
What's not in ArchiCAD Start Edition are a number of features aimed at larger firms or more advanced users such as Teamwork, hot linked modules and Lightworks rendering. You can find a feature comparison between ArchiCAD 12 and ArchiCAD Start Edition 2009 HERE. For those of you that still need rendering you can use a variety of excellent stand alone rendering packages including Artlantis Render and Piranesi.
For those of you looking to get started in BIM and whether your budgets are constrained by the economy or just the desire to make a more affordable intro to BIM, ArchiCAD Start Edition 2009 is a great tool to get you there.
GC
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