Architecture

Codespring Architecture Expertise

Through the years Codespring has provided software development services  for the architecture industry,  developing the ArchiCAD engine (New Generation Teamwork), developer support tools, Q&A support tools and various add-on’ s. The development of ArchiCAD is an outstanding proof for handling with confidence and expertise more than 6 million lines of code and for contributing to the functional enrichment of an award winning software. Our Romanian software development center has contributed to the business success of our clients by precisely deploying the professional skills of the engineers, technicians and information scientists.

Challenges of The Architecture Industry

Architecture industry is developing under the continuous pressure of time and budget effective constraints. Successful software for architecture must perform multiple tasks while processing huge amount of data in time units that become shorter from one year to another. In such context, Codespring is an adept of the ‘long race runner concept’: with an ambitious speed and functional goals our team successfully engages in long and complex projects.

Architecture Work Examples:

GRAPHISOFT : ArchiCAD engine. Numerous functionalities of the New Generation Teamwork like the new hotlink system, editing elements by floor, floor structure, XRef, unique element identification, undo, file saving and loading, object connections, XML templates have been developed by our professional team. From the Q&A support tools, our engineers have worked on the Event Logger, implementing the client in C++ and Java, in communication with a server running PHP and MySql Database.

Our team took part in developing ArchiCAD through several lifecycles .We contributed to most important features of ArchiCAD like New Generation Teamwork, improved Hotlink and most of all adapting the core functionality to support these new features.

Bug fixing involved other peoples work and code almost all the time, because components and modules were constructed in tight relations. Responsibility was a key issue in every day’s work; even a minor error could have had wide repercussions. Tight schedules and complex task dependencies posed yet another challenge. Various add-ons executed or contributed  by CODESPRING include Interactive Scheduler, TopStempel, Attribute Manager, Stair Maker and MEP Modeler.

GRAPHISOFT : MEP Modeler. Purpose: an add-on for ArchiCAD, that enables modeling of ductwork and plumbing, and integrates as much as possible in ArchiCAD (short learning curve). Strict development rules, multiplatform, language independent: these were the basic requirements of development.

Besides the challenges of the features themselves, there was one to rule them all: be ArchiCAD-like. Although it was something new for ArchiCAD, custom solutions had to be minimized. As the new TeamWork was developed in ArchiCAD 13, the MEP add-on was also updated to be compatible (and useable) with it.

The add-on was written from scratch, but we had experience from an internal version. Apart from the low-level API, all was done in C++. Proprietary framework(s) of Graphisoft were used, as well as the complete Graphisoft development infrastructure.