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Zermatt [and in 2009: Virtual Building Explorer]

Anonymous
Not applicable
Has anybody heard some news about the zermatt engine? We know it sort of stopped beeing developed any further but any idea if there is still a future for this product?

Thanks Carsten
142 REPLIES 142
Paul King
Advisor
archibaldo wrote:
Virtual Building Explorer is the child of Zermatt engine because Zermatt 3.1 = superior settings than the VBE for archicad .
I have the dream to export Zermatt from Artlantis with superior textured modell , or better export the .exe directly from artlantis ! Shadow , global illumination computed in artlantis and maped into model.
I have had a dialogue about this very thing with the developers of Artlantis & Zermatt (I have been a beta tester for both), but could not convince anyone sufficiently.

I will keep trying now that VBE has breathed new life into the old Zermatt
PAUL KING | https://www.prime.net.nz
ArchiCAD 8-27 | Twinmotion 2023
Windoze 11 PC | Intel Core i9 10900K | Nvidia Gforce RTX 3080 | 32 Gb DDR3 | 2x4K monitor extended desktop
Laszlo Nagy
Community Admin
Community Admin
whatever wrote:
as a user I like VBE but I think this should be more Architectural focused, I mean it is nice to be able to walk through the building , and wear red-cyan glasses ( although I could only find Hana Montana ones ! yeah .. not so funny when you wear those at office ! ) , so it is noce that we can walk , jump and duck , but I still think we should be able to generate Sections and plans ( driven from the 3D model something like 3D cut away) . which I don't think is so complicated, but it doesn't look that we have it within the package .
This is the fun thing about Wishlists: you get the product, you think some new features would be good, so you can make a wish. I am sure the guys at GS plan to develop it further so this is the right moment to come up with wishes for future versions.
Loving Archicad since 1995 - Find Archicad Tips at x.com/laszlonagy
AMD Ryzen9 5900X CPU, 64 GB RAM 3600 MHz, Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, 500 GB NVMe SSD
2x28" (2560x1440), Windows 10 PRO ENG, Ac20-Ac27
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
laszlonagy wrote:
This is the fun thing about Wishlists: you get the product, you think some new features would be good, so you can make a wish. I am sure the guys at GS plan to develop it further so this is the right moment to come up with wishes for future versions.
Indeed - the VBE pages on ArchicadWiki already refer to some wish-features that are already anticipated for version 2.0.

Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Anonymous
Not applicable
Cary wrote:
US pricing

I ordered today.

Who, besides Cary, is planning on spending $645 per license, in a broken global economy, for a model viewer??

All of the functionality of VBE should be in AC already.
If it isn't free then our clients, contractors and consulting engineers can't (won't) use it without us being present. Therefore, this is merely a way to present your model to clients.

I personally see this as eye candy only. Obstacles prevent it from actually being useful.

Furthermore, who staggers the version releases of cross-platform software? That's not very smart. I'm sure you guys will rattle off a few companies who have done it in the past, but come on...
Anonymous
Not applicable
Eric wrote:
Cary wrote:
US pricing

I ordered today.


If it isn't free then our clients, contractors and consulting engineers can't (won't) use it without us being present. Therefore, this is merely a way to present your model to clients.
you are able to save EXE files , that anyone can run, you need the program it self just to create those exe files, but using them doesn't require having a license or the software at all .
Anonymous
Not applicable
laszlonagy wrote:
This is the fun thing about Wishlists: you get the product, you think some new features would be good, so you can make a wish. I am sure the guys at GS plan to develop it further so this is the right moment to come up with wishes for future versions.
I agree having a wish list is a great thing , but I really think that the ability to create sections is not really a wish ! it should be a default thing

look at artlantis cut box tool ? look at 5D presenter from Vico , absolutely it is a thing that anyone related to building industry will think of , only a video game guy will think that VBE has it all ( oh..I miss Half Life - Counter Strike days ! )
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Eric wrote:
If it isn't free then our clients, contractors and consulting engineers can't (won't) use it without us being present. Therefore, this is merely a way to present your model to clients.
Hey Eric,

Good to hear from you again.

Not to defend any of your other points, but your comment above doesn't make sense to me. VBE is entirely free to the client, contractor and engineer. A firm only needs one license in-house. The licensed VBE saves an EXE file just like the three sample EXE files on the VBE web site - anybody anywhere can run that file and view the model without a license. Free.

The problem right now is no Mac support, but the Wiki pages note that Mac support is not only coming, but that the intent is that Mac or Windows will be able to generate a free viewer targeted for either platform, not just the platform generating the viewer.

Cheers,
Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Anonymous
Not applicable
Karl wrote:
(...) but the Wiki pages note that Mac support is not only coming, but that the intent is that Mac or Windows will be able to generate a free viewer targeted for either platform, not just the platform generating the viewer.
That is very good news.

I have been thinking about what I don´t like about VBE (there are a lot of things I like about it).

One of the problems I see, and this is something you can appreciate with the examples provided by GS, is that careening through a building is not the best way to understand it.

Parallel views, 3d floor plans, sections, are all very important to understand spaces and relationships between them.

Also being able to extract information from the various components, besides dimensions and layers, is indispensable. For instance, if I select a door I want to see all kinds of info, like materials, fabricator, prices, fire rating, and all those things that are already in my model.

So, hopefully the current VBE is only a 1.0v, and those very useful things will be added. My only fear is that they are easy to add, but will be expensive non the less.
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Krippahl wrote:
That is very good news.
The official statement on that is in the evolving VBE FAQ page here:
http://www.archicadwiki.com/Virtual%20Building%20Explorer/FAQ

Some interesting known issues are here:
http://www.archicadwiki.com/Virtual%20Building%20Explorer/Known%20Issues

Cheers,
Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Erika Epstein
Booster
In the demo I saw last week, the VBE files all showed measurements in metric even when the original file was imperial. Was this a bug or is there a setting somewhere?
Erika
Architect, Consultant
MacBook Pro Retina, 15-inch Yosemite 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Mac OSX 10.11.1
AC5-18
Onuma System

"Implementing Successful Building Information Modeling"

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