Jared Banks

Printing Architectural Documents is a Waste of Your Time

A local Minnesota ArchiCAD (and Revit) user wrote to me about his new machine after reading my post over on BIM Engine about hardware requirements for ArchiCAD. He had this to say: “…I am testing a brand new iMac.  It’s the 27″ model and it’s completely built-to-order with the beefier hardware.  I’ve been using it for a couple weeks now and it’s really nice for ArchiCAD.  The 2560 x 1440

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Skeuomorphs and Architectural Documentation

Architectural Documentation in the 21st Century There’s a good chance you’re aware of Seth Godin. He writes some pretty amazing stuff. My current favorite is this post: Skeuomorphs = failure. If you’re not familiar with what a skeuomorph is, here’s the first sentence from the wikipedia entry: “A skeuomorph is a physical ornament or design on an object made to resemble another material or technique.” I think this fits perfectly

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ArchiCAD 2013 Spring Academy – May 24th and 25th in Riga, Latvia

Have you ever attended one of the ArchiCAD Schools in Europe? I haven’t. But boy do I want to! Maybe 2014 will be the year I finally make it. My life should be less crazy by then. Or maybe 2015… Well you don’t have the excuses I do. Here are the details: ArchiCAD Spring Academy 2013 is a two day celebration that will educate, entertain, and immerse you in the

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Anything You can Do, I can Do Better: taking materials from SketchUp to ArchiCAD

I expect to have dozens of people argue against that title. But I sure bet it caught your attention. The real point is that most architectural software has something to teach us about our own preferred program. The examples are endless. But today I want to focus on one program in particular: SketchUp. SketchUp models, the traditional variety of them, have this beautiful balance of realism and abstraction. They sit

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Changing Course and an Incredible New Album

My daughters and I were driving to Costco on a recent weekend. Since it was a Saturday afternoon I had the radio tuned to MPR (Minnesota Public Radio). I heard an interview with Kacey Musgraves. I guess she’s kind of a big deal right now with a new album, some country music award nominations, and some songs on some show or another (Nashville?). I’d never heard of her. But her

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A great interview and some thoughts about Autodesk

When I was writing yesterday’s post, which asked the question “Do you love your BIM software too much?“, I had in the back of my mind an article I recently read. But I couldn’t find it. Which is for the best because that post took a turn in a different direction. Well I found the article. If you haven’t already read this, take a moment and read a great interview

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Do you love your BIM software too much?

The recent announcement of Google killing Google Reader has me thinking about dead software, over specialization, and the dependence on software companies. My readers who use Autodesk products might feel a little uncomfortable for a moment… are you too dependent on the whims of a mega-corporation that is clearly less interested in architects than they were when their flagship product was AutoCAD? Click on that link and count the number

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Skill vs Power: Learning BIM

If you have six minutes, please do yourself a favor and watch this video. But instead of thinking about video games, think about BIM adoption in firms. Specifically think about people learning ArchiCAD, Revit, or one of the other BIM authoring tools out there. Here’s the best analogy from the video, or an approximation at least. If you’re under 40, you’ve probably played Street Fighter II. Or something very similar.

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Revit 2014, the Great Convergence, and impatience until June

So Revit 2014… have we all had time to digest yet? Here’s a great rundown of some of the highlights of Revit 2014 from David Light, a Revit Pro. Laszlo Nagy, one of the moderators over at ArchiCAD-Talk, gives some interesting perspective on Revit 2014 as it relates to ArchiCAD. You can read his full comments and the related thread here. Below are main points: Project Browser can have tabs:

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