Looking at DDS CAD, its interface does appear like a Windows product from the 1990s. It seems that the company is finally identifying and is willing to address areas of obvious synergy within its own stable, as well as continuing to acquire new technologies and firms. Nemetschek’s seeming reticence to integrate its burgeoning stable of products has been a source of debate in the industry over the years.

The integration within Graphisoft will take multiple years to fulfil, but this obviously gives the Archicad developers an opportunity to form a dedicated team to build powerful MEP libraries, analysis and automation into the product and give Archicad an equal footing when compared to Revit like-for-like. It has predominantly sold directly and is popular in central Europe. DDS CAD is an MEP-focused BIM application with powerful calculation tools, intelligent components, symbols, macros, parametric objects, reports and parts lists generators DDS CAD is a Norwegian-based developer of dedicated MEP design tools, which was acquired by Nemetschek in 2013. But would a structural or MEP engineer choose Archicad as their weapon of choice for core design? Probably not.īut this could change over the next few years, as Nemetschek takes DDS CAD (Data Design System) and merges it into Graphisoft. If you look at the latest releases concerning structural design, there are swathes of built-in features that you don’t see anywhere else for seamless iterative workflows between architect and structural engineer. As it’s head-to-head against Revit, which is multi-disciplinary, this has been a problem and perhaps created a misconception.įor many years Archicad has been developed to cater to the display of structural objects, as well as mechanical, electrical and plumbing components.

It sounds like it only does BIM for architecture. When it comes to defining the capabilities of a product through its name, Archicad poses difficulties. Over the next year, two of its brands - Graphisoft and DDS-CAD - will merge to add full MEP capabilities to the Archicad ecosystem German holding company, Nemetschek, owns fifteen AEC design related brands, including three BIM tools: Graphisoft (Archicad), Vectorworks and Allplan.

Archicad 23 mep