ARCHICAD 23 was released in September rather than the usual June. So releasing my template in January instead of September seems reasonable, right? I’ve got a lot to share about the template, but if you’d like to just jump right to downloading it, click the support button now.

Shoegnome Open Template V23

Every few years I rebuild my template from scratch. This was one of those years. For the past three weeks I’ve been ignoring all other work, focusing on rebuilding my template. I re-evaluated everything. I even reworked by Pens. The general concept of my Pens stayed the same, but I finally aligned them to more closely match to the Out of the Box (OOTB) pens. I remapped my pens to match the OOTB template where it made sense, got rid of pens that I no longer needed, and moved other pens as necessary to avoid conflict with the OOTB template pens. In my ARCHICAD 22 template, the cut pen was #11. Now it’s #1, like in the OOTB USA template. For the typical user of my template-someone who starts with Favorites-these changes will be invisible. All the Views will look the same. All the Objects will function normally. The major benefits are there is less conflict with the USA library and future updates to the template will be easier for me to manage. Now a random Object won’t look weird. For a long time I resisted this because I wanted out of template elements to show wrong. But as I’ve streamlined my template and moved my interest in other directions, this has become less important. In fact with Graphic Overrides and moving away from line weights, most of my concerns about ‘bad’ elements have vanished. Beyond all that, my Pen Sets are now free of old baggage. There are no more holdovers from templates long past, and long obsolete.

Since I redid my pens, I had to review EVERY element, Graphic Override, and View in my template. Once I started rebuilding, I was ruthless. I cut, renamed, reviewed, and revised everything. Some tweaks are minor (fixing naming conventions). Others are more noticeable: I updated my dimension standards. I also let go of some stubbornness. I like Helvetica better than Arial. But Helvetica isn’t on every computer. Arial is. So goodbye Helvetica, hello the template looking right everywhere.

If I had to give a theme to my ARCHICAD 23 template, it’d be ‘confronting frustrations’. For instance, I’m tired of the OOTB shower head Objects. I’ve been dragging forward an ARCHICAD 14 shower head. It was replaced in ARCHICAD 15 with one that was too fancy. The ARCHICAD 14 shower head is garbage, but it is inoffensive. My plan was always to make my own. Right? Someday I’d learn GDL. Then at ARCHICAD By the Beach in Cabo a few months ago, I watched James Murray show off Object building using the Library Part Maker and other GDL-free routes. I was inspired to finally make some Objects, specifically the shower head. I also decided I’d create a simple shower controls Object because it’s important to locate those as well. I used the Beam tool and made a perfect shower control valve handle. I saved it as an Object and the translation turned a smooth cylinder into something with an unacceptable amount of facets. So I turned it into a Morph and also tried Library Part Maker. No better. I needed to rebuild the geometry natively from a Morph. That annoyed me. I asked my friendly GDL gurus (James Murray and Brian Spears) what I should do. And they (especially James “I can do anything with GDL” Murray) of course told me to script the parts in GDL. Well January 7, 2020 was the day I finally built something with GDL script. Fourteen years almost to the day that I first started using ARCHICAD. I don’t know if I’ll become a GDL master or use it regularly, but I’ve spent enough of the past 48 hours scripting that it’s starting to make sense. My ARCHICAD 23 template has three custom Objects: a shower head with two variations, shower controls with two variations, and a hand shower. If Object building becomes a thing I regularly do, I’ll remove my objects from the embedded library and share a separate library folder. But for now with so few to share, embedded Objects will make all our lives easier.

There is so much more to the template. Below is a video covering some of its features. It’s a long video (almost 20 minutes) so I’ve included time codes in the description.

There is one big thing missing from my template. I don’t have a sample building like in previous versions. That’s coming. My grand plan-and let’s see if this happens-is to create a second template file, one with a more complete sample building. I want to design a simple 800 sq ft house by mid-February. We’ll see if I can pull that off. The blank template will be for starting new projects and the sample building will be for reference to see how I work.

As always the template is free; clicking the PayPal support button (above or on the template page) is always optional. I will say this is the first time while template building that the thought of charging for it crossed my mind. I didn’t track my hours over the past three weeks, but probably should have. It was definitely thousands of dollars worth of my time. Which is to say, any financial support you want to send my way would be much appreciated.

What are you waiting for?

Go download the Shoegnome Open Template for Archicad 23! 

If you aren’t using the current version of ARCHICAD, you can download older versions of my template. If you use my template, I highly recommend you use my Work Environment as well. The two work together well and the Work Environment is designed to reinforce the best practices of the template. You can download my Work Environment here.

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