Eric Bobrow Site Modeling Tips. It gets REALLY good at about 6:08
Eric Bobrow has a lot of great free videos; he's recently posted a bunch of new ones on his website that highlight his 7 Keys to Best Practices for ArchiCAD. But my favorite one is still his terrain modeling video. The
TVs, Plotters, Computer Screens, Paintings, and Self Promotion
Paintings and the Art of Self-Referencing A year ago I wrote about putting paintings and wall art in models. I recommended a trick using walls, niches, and aligning 3D textures. It's a good technique, but I have to admit that I
Stained Glass Tutorial
I recently had to model a Queen Anne house in ArchiCAD to produce some renderings for a client. It was a ton of fun. And I learned some cool tricks while modeling the various trim and ornamentation. I have to
Locked Doors and Red Doors… guiding clients through BIMx
As I was developing my BIMx competition entry, I tried to give each room or area in the file something special. There was the zombie soldier with the axe in his back walking towards the tank, the horde of zombies
Adventures in GDL – guest blogger Jeroen de Bruin talks about being a GDL Specialist
My adventure started after finishing a bachelor in architecture and working in several architects' offices. I found that drafting in 2D really annoyed me: First draw the floor plan, then the elevations, manually add in shadows… and then the architect
From AutoCAD (to ArchiCAD) to SketchUp… a race
Recent History Over the past few months I've made a couple of terrain models in ArchiCAD 14 and then exported them to SketchUp 8. At first this was done to figure out a way to collaborate with a fellow architect
Invisible Beams… aka Rookie Mistake… aka Expert Trick
Hidden walls and beams can cut visible elements, and not all trimming is done with SEOs or the trim to roof command. This is most often seen by new users when they don't yet understand layer intersection groups and priority
Conditional Operators… aka Graphic Operators… aka POST 100
(note: if you read this before 11 pm on Sunday June 19th, 2011, you should reread it as I've made some important updates) In many 2D drawings (whether done by hand or flatcad) parts of objects are left undrawn for clarity.
Paintings and Frames
There are a couple ways to hang a picture in an ArchiCAD project. There is an object which I can never find in the library when I look for it. There's also the object mentioned in this forum post. My
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
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%
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
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