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 pizza for everyone. Thoughts? While the intent of the meeting was to talk about first impressions of version 14, we ended up spending the full two hours on Teamwork 2.
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 zero, archicad will freak out. It might work in 3D, but you’ll get lots of error messages. I don’t like error messages. One solution is to make a custom door.
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 discussion. Be warned though, it’s heavy on the BIM and light to non-existant on the breakfast. I think the first meeting I attended last year had donuts, but nothing since.
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 our experiences. We’ll also be looking at Teamwork 2 and I’ll go through some examples of Solid Element Operations. As always feel free to bring anything you want to share
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 sent tons of 3D views similar to those below. Because of this, I modeled all the cabinet doors for about a dozen different variations. In contrast the island, which the
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 model this, let alone in so many ways Take that SketchUp! And this too!
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% parametric vs. 100% dumb lines and objects. It’s about utility. With my current workflow, and that of the people I work with, there’s a balance of usefulness. New construction walls,
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 is the ‘I’ in your work?” If I remember correctly she had mostly used AutoCAD and only briefly dabbled in Revit. Her complaint stemmed from most of the talk revolving around extracting views
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 – This is how we all feel when we start ArchiCAD. The first two weeks can be just awful. You’ll curse your new employers or think your reseller has swindled
