Jared’s introduction: This post means a lot to me. I learned so much from Link when I first starting using ARCHICAD. He was one of my early ARCHICAD Heroes. Back in 2011 right before he took a two year break from the ARCHICAD community, he helped me create what I still think are the two definitive articles on Groups in ARCHICAD. If you haven’t read those posts recently, you absolutely should. They’ll change the way you think about that simple feature: Part 1 and Part 2. Speaking of Link stepping away from ARCHICAD for two years: the void he left, along with James Murray letting Onland.info go silent around the same time, is probably a significant portion of what fueled my expansion of Shoegnome between 2011 and 2013. But that’s the past. The present is that Link and I have become good friends-in fact on his way to the Key Client Conference in Budapest (where he’s hanging out with so many of my other favorite ARCHICAD gurus, including James Murray) he stopped by my house in Seattle for lunch.

Beyond all that though, what Link describes below is so similar to my own experience with learning ARCHICAD. It’s the reason I structure my YouTube tutorial videos the way I do. It’s the reason I spend too much time responding to e-mails and comments. It’s the reason I write the way I do. As Link will attest to, having access to a helpful, experienced user to ask questions of is critical to mastering ARCHICAD. And Link has put together an awesome solution to provide that experience to users world-wide.This Post is by Link Ellis.

Online ARCHICAD Training by BIM6x: ArchiBoost

Whether you’re an ARCHICAD newbie, have been using it for a few years or are a seasoned pro, I bet you’ve wished you could have someone sit side-by-side with you and explain why ARCHICAD does what it does!

I was lucky enough to have an experienced, enthusiastic and knowledgeable ARCHICAD user help me when I first started using the program. His name is Andrew Zarb and he’s still smashing it with ARCHICAD eighteen years later, these days for the Sunshine Coast Regional Council in Queensland, Australia. I only worked with Andrew for a few short months, but I would pester him constantly with questions on everything about ARCHICAD. This was back on ARCHICAD 5.0; things were a little more challenging then. Documentation was more limited than the ARCHICAD feature set, Linkedin was four years from going live, Facebook six years, YouTube seven years. Our reseller was 138 kilometres away, and the only other outside help was a fledgling escribe usergroup of ARCHICAD users from distant corners of the globe—which was to later evolve into ARCHICAD-Talk. Having Andrew at my beckon call was an absolute godsend.

As I became better with ARCHICAD I too started to help people master the program. Starting with that escribe usergroup, then on ARCHICAD-Talk. I used to read the questions, then study the manuals and run tests in ARCHICAD. I’d ask existing ARCHICAD gurus like Karl Ottenstein, Dwight Atkinson and Djordje Grujic and even obtained help from the kind folk at GRAPHISOFT Headquarters, all in order to get answers to people. I even managed to get in to the then-exclusive ARCHICAD beta testing group, and for the last twelve versions have enjoyed beta testing, alpha testing and otherwise contributing to the development of my beloved ARCHICAD. Over the years I have popped in to help on all the ARCHICAD channels here and there, but decided to turn it all into a career by creating my own ARCHICAD consulting company called ArchiLINK. This took me all over the world, training users and providing customized templates.  After marrying my favorite (although not necessarily best) ARCHICAD student and having a child together, I am now the ARCHICAD Technical Director at BIM6x—a company my long-time friend and ARCHICAD reseller Chris Clark and I formed, and which is dedicated to selling and supporting ARCHICAD.

So in a nutshell, that’s my story—so far. Essentially basing my life around ARCHICAD and trying to give back whenever I can. And I suspect I have about twenty more years left to make a mark, so what’s next? Chris and I have been and still are very busy at BIM6x developing a complete end-to-end solution for ARCHICAD users. From making people aware that ARCHICAD even exists, to then giving them a test drive, to selling them the software, to providing automated templates to get them off to the best start, to customizing their templates to suit their exact business needs, to analyzing their projects and providing comprehensive feedback, to various training solutions. It’s not all ready yet, but it’s getting there—and the future looks very promising. There’s one solution I’d like to share now though as it relates to having that ARCHICAD expert sitting side-by-side with you to answer your most pressing questions and show you the most efficient and GRAPHISOFT-recommended techniques. It’s called ArchiBOOST and as the name suggests it’s intended to boost your ARCHICAD knowledge and productivity. So it’s not a complete training solution by any means, that’s coming, but it is extremely helpful in supplementing the existing resources that are available to you, such as the ARCHICAD Help Center, ARCHICAD-Talk, the Linkedin groups, the Facebook groups, the Youtube channels, and all the various other resources out there.

ArchiBOOST is a 90 minute online ARCHICAD Training experience designed to boost your ARCHICAD knowledge and productivity. You get to share screens and quiz your own BIM6x ARCHICAD Expert for the entire time-all to yourself. You can discuss almost anything you want. From how to use a particular tool, to best workflow processes, to discovering new techniques, to getting the very most out of your template, to BIM Server and even BIMx. Anything you need. And it’s all recorded for you to review at any time. There’s even email follow up if there’s anything that can’t be answered immediately. And it only costs $199.

So if you or someone you know is just struggling with ARCHICAD and needs a boost to get them going, please consider using this awesome resource. It’s like having your very own Andrew! There’s no need to struggle any longer!

Follow Shoegnome on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. If you don’t have an ARCHICAD guru sitting next to you, find one online. There’s no better way to learn BIM than from someone who has been in the trenches.

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