• What kind of machine should I buy

Latest System Requirements

Aside from the "requirements," it depends partially on the work you plan to do.

Many people function completely off a laptop with the minimum requirements just fine for most work.

If you plan on doing very large (high-rises, schools, stadiums), very complex projects (neo-classical buildings with lots of modeled trim, or Gehry-esque designs), or extensive rendering, then a more powerful machine will be very important.

Selecting the components of your config

Platform

Select Windows or Mac platform according to your taste.

CPU

Some ArchiCAD functions are very CPU-heavy, so it's a good idea to buy the fastest processor you can afford.

Functions like building sections/elevations, processing schedules all run on a single processor. ArchiCAD is partly multi-thread. If you do lots of rendering, a dual-core or dual-processor machine is worth it. Multiple processors are also put to use when you are updating your drawings that are referenced from an external ArchiCAD file, since multiple copies of ArchiCAD are running at the same time (see Background ArchiCAD

RAM

RAM is probably the most important component of your configuration and probably the cheapest to add.1 GB of RAM is a bare minimum. ArchiCAD can't use more than 4GB. Depending on the size of your model, ArchiCAD may use several gigs of RAM, and if the system has to use the Hard Disk to provide Virtual memory, then it will slow down ArchiCAD considerably. If you are working on large models, more RAM will buy you the most performance for your money.

In the past Macintosh had the competitive advantage of handling more RAM, but now the 64-bit Windows operating systems also give you access to the maximum memory address space ArchiCAD can use. More on this topic: Windows XP 64-bit edition

Video Card

The performance of your video card only matters when you navigate in the 3D window in OpenGL mode. The better the video card you have, the faster you can rotate around or fly through the model when working in the 3D window. The time it takes to generate a 3D model in the 3D window, a section/elevation, or making a rendering depends on the speed of your CPU and the amount of RAM available, not the video card.

The card should have at least 64MB RAM, preferably 128 MB. This is usually enough, except if you create really huge models. More RAM does not make a video card faster, although more expensive cards have 256 or more megs anyway. "Professional" cards, such as NVidia Quadro, ATI FireGL, 3D Labs or Matrox are usually more reliable (they have well tested OpenGL drivers), but are not necessarily faster than gaming cards, such as Nvidia GeForce or ATI Radeon series. For the price of a professional card, you can usually buy a "gaming" card that is several times faster with ArchiCAD. However, drivers for the gaming cards are optimized for games, and may have display problems with ArchiCAD. Since drivers for gaming cards are released very frequently, find the one that works for you and stick with it. For Mac users, usually the stock video cards are more than sufficient.

Hard disk

Since ArchiCAD reads/writes a lot of data during operation (not just project files, but temporary data too, like cache files), it is a good idea to have a RAID setup for both data safety and performance. Learn more about RAID: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks Some ArchiCAD tasks (e.g. how much time it takes to start ArchiCAD) are Hard-disk limited, so the RPM value of your Hard Disk is directly influencing the speed of certain tasks in ArchiCAD.

Display

Display is one of the most important factors in productivity with any CAD software, especially one that uses a lot of palettes on screen. Avoid anything smaller than 1280x1024, but the bigger is the better. 1600x1200 or 1680x1050 is comfortable, provided the screen is large enough to read (19" or more). Using two mid-sized monitors can be cheaper than a single large one. Many people prefer wide screen monitors for Archicad, with palettes arranged vertically on the sides and working windows in the center.

Related Articles

• Video Cards: http://www.archicadwiki.com/Video_Cards

• about multiprocessing: http://archicadwiki.com/Multiprocessing

• about 64-bit: http://archicadwiki.com/64-bit

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