MNAUG #8 Recap
Last night we had our 8th Minnesota ArchiCAD Usergroup meeting. We're coming up on one full year of meetings (our first meeting was in October 2009)! We'll have to celebrate at our next meeting in November. I'm thinking I'll bring
Frameless Doors
ArchiCAD, from my experience, doesn't like making frameless doors. It seems so obvious, just set the frame dimensions to zero, press okay, and then go to lunch. Try again. If you go the simple route of setting the frame to
BIM Breakfast
The next BIM Breakfast Club is on Tuesday September 21st @ 7:30 am in the boardroom at the AIA Minnesota offices. If you haven't been to a BBC session, it's worth getting over to International Market Square and joining the
Our Next Usergroup Meeting is just around the corner!
Our next Minnesota ArchiCAD User Group is Tuesday September 28th, 2010 at Wilkus Architects in Eden Prairie (6:30-8:30 pm). A lot of us have been using ArchiCAD 14 for the past few months and we are all going to share
Some Kitchens
I model all the major elements in kitchens. However the detail across the kitchen is usually a mix of 2D and 3D. In one kitchen, 08113, we spent a lot of time working on two elevations with the client. We
Dashed Lines, Crazy Ramps, and Trees
The other users on the ArchiCAD-Talk Forum never cease to surprise and amaze me. There's so much to be learned from them. Here's my three favorite posts from the past few days. Dashed Lines on adjoining slabs I never knew ArchiCAD could
A quick word on details, cabinets, and walls
Do I use ArchiCAD to its fullest? Not even close. Is my work a combination of 2D & 3D? of course. Each project is more 3D and less 2D. However, it's not about 100% 3D vs. 100% 2D or 100%
A question asked before I was ready to answer
I was on a panel discussion on BIM in residential architecture during the summer of 2009. One of the audience members, after hearing the four of us talk for an hour, got up and said “But where
10 ArchiCAD tips from Pantera’s Reinventing the Steel
The track list from Pantera's last studio album, Reinventing the Steel, has great advice for any ArchiCAD user. You don't need to love their music like I do to see what accidental BIM geniuses these guys were. Let's look: Hellbound -
Operators
I keep the majority of my operators on a hidden layer called Operators. However it's a pain to turn on the layer when I need it on. In times past I'd either go to the layers, select operator, turn it
Eyeballs and Locks
I've set the keyboard shortcut for the Quick Layers palette to 'control + X'. The filtering capabilities of this little palette are huge and easy to use. I am always isolating layers to do quick moves. When working on a
There are better uses of a machine that sends messages to the past, but…
I'm excited about version 14. I started using ArchiCAD on version 9, dabbled in 8.1, 10, 12, and 13, and have been using v11 since it was released. While working on my first project in v11 back in 2007, I
What have you Unlearned Today?
We all have bad habits in ArchiCAD. Some of this is from how we were taught and some from the version we learned on. As the program evolves, we need to reevaluate how we work. Do we still need to
Avoiding Ugly Messes
I recently attended the usergroup for another BIM software. And I'm damn proud of our local ArchiCAD usergroup. Our mailing list is about a 1/6th the size of theirs, but they only had about double our usual
I find 3.5/ is the Easiest
Whether you're using the the coordinate box or the tracker, there are a lot of ways to write a number. Some are easier than others. A quick rule of thumb is that ArchiCAD recognizes fractions as inches, whole numbers and
MNAUG #7 Recap
Here's a quick recap of MNAUG #7. David Wilson from Charles Stinson Architects introduced all of us to Artlantis. He did a great job of walking us through a project from ArchiCAD through Artlantis to final tweaking in Photoshop. If anyone
5 Minutes on the Forum makes us all (look) Smart
Take a few minutes and check out the techniques mentioned on this post as well as this one on the ArchiCAD-Talk forum. I highly recommend setting up a keyboard shortcut for the command mentioned in the second post. I have set
Benchmarking and the Endless Path of Improvement
Below is an excerpt from a draft of a document I'm putting together for my role as CAD / BIM Manager at SALA Architects: Competencies: Outside of the office standards, users will not learn or use the
MNAUG Challenge #1
(or how to humble yourself every 90 seconds) In preparation for my next post on strategies for learning ArchiCAD, take a look at the ArchiCAD Competency Challenge. Try a few questions and if you have time take the whole test. It's tough. It's
Aesthetics of Production
I love design. But I must admit I am obsessed with production. On Friday a coworker and I went to view the Bearden Place competition entries at the University of Minnesota Urban Research and Outreach/Engagement Center. (most of the entries