This is a story I’ve told thousands of times. When I first starting learning ArchiCAD I would spend a little bit of each day on the ArchiCAD-Talk forum-a few minutes in the morning, some time during lunch, at the end of the day when I was just dragging and looking for some inspiration. I would also jump on whenever I had a question or when my coworkers had issues I couldn’t solve. The forum and the ArchiCAD greats there taught (and continue to teach) me so much. I’ve written about those giants before, including my Top 5 (3 of whom I’ve now met in person). These days I have much less time to peruse the forum, but I do my best to regularly check in.

If you are in need of some inspiration from the forum, here’s my three main tricks:

1. Look for posts with images-in the thread list you’ll see a little paperclip. Posts with images mean questions and/or answers contain a visual component (duh). The images are useful to understand the issues, but also often have bonus incidental content. So a question about schedules might also contain an image that reveals some other feature you didn’t know about. Plus if you’re tired or pressed for time, it’s easy to scan over the images to see if the text is worth reading.
2. Look for posts with comments by your favorite people. I’m more likely to read threads that contain answers by some of my ArchiCAD heroes because I want to see their advice and/or because if they spent the time to respond, then it’s probably worth my time as well (especially if they can’t answer it, but I can).
3. Use the Search function. From the Search screen you can focus on a particular interest you have-say angled curtain walls or spaceships-and search the entire 10+ years of the forum for answers.
4. Click on a user’s profile. If you click on a user’s name in the thread list or on the profile button below a post, you can get to their profile page. From there you can bring up every post they have ever written. So if you need inspiration you can just scroll through everything one of your favorite posters has been writing about. I definitely still do that.

Writing this post though I’m reminded of why I don’t check the forum that often anymore. It’s a rabbit hole for me. I jumped on to find example images for this post and then 15 minutes later I found myself just reading about cool Objects and various problems and solutions. I get sucked in and find so much of it interesting. So while my tips above will help you find good stuff to read, it won’t necessarily keep you from over-indulging in the magic of the forum.

Oh right, this post is supposed to be about Twitter

Laszlo Nagy is the ArchiCAD-Talk Moderator and Site Admin. He also happens to be a wonderful person-he gave a bunch of us ArchiCAD users a tour of Budapest when we were all there for the Key Client Conference earlier this year. He has just started tweeting, with the express purpose of sharing highlights from the forum. This is awesome. He hasn’t tweeted much yet, but go check out what he has shared. It’s all top quality stuff. Go follow him. And if you don’t have a Twitter account but use ArchiCAD, go get an account. Then follow him and maybe a few other ArchiCAD focused accounts. But really just Laszlo.

Laszlo Nagy’s ArchiCAD-Talk Tweets

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