Archicad from Graphisoft gives users the ability to create great architecture and increase productivity. From day one, Archicad has been designed by architects for architects, and over the years it has gradually become more and more refined to allow its users to better:

Archicad® offers a different approach to your workflow process, which gives you more control over your design, while maintaining accuracy and efficiency in documentation. While you raise walls, lay floors, add doors and windows, build stairs and construct roofs, this Building Information Authoring Tool creates a central database of 3D model data. From this you can extract all the information needed to completely describe your design - complete plans, sections and elevations, architectural and construction details, Bills of Quantities, window/door/finish schedules, renderings, animations and virtual reality scenes. That means while you're designing, Archicad is creating all the project documentation so there's little repetitive and tedious drafting work. And unlike designing in 2D software, the Virtual BuildingTM approach also means that you can make changes at any time maintaining the integrity of your documents, without risking costly errors or costing you productivity.

Next Limit Technologies has produced a plug-in for ArchiCAD which provides designers, architects and modelers the ability to render their ArchiCAD models and scenes with Maxwell Render.

Key features include:

With the Maxwell Render plug-in, users simply model their scene in ArchiCAD, apply materials and other settings inside ArchiCAD using the plug-in, and render the scene.