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Pantheon of Workmonsters

In a world of shoegnomes, there are workmonsters… Much like I came up with the realization that I was a shoegnome years before I started my company and blog, the concept of workmonsters has been floating around in my head for a long time. What are workmonsters? They are a special breed of coworkers. I have a feeling that you already understand. This is just a small sampling of archetypes.

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Tips, Tricks, and Cheats… ArchiCAD Dimensions

Dimensions in ArchiCAD are super basic, right? Well here’s a video on some tips, tricks, and cheats regarding this essential tool. I cover about 15 to 20 different aspects of ArchiCAD’s Dimension Tool. So clearly not an exhaustive or comprehensive discussion. If there’s interest, I’ll gladly do more videos like this for various tools and features with ArchiCAD (ei, back to basics videos). Hopefully regardless of your skill level a

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Frustrating ArchiCAD Things That Need to be Changed: You

Okay that title is a little facetious. But you should expect that from me by now. There is a wonderful thread on LinkedIN that was started two weeks ago on the ArchiCAD Residential Designers Group. You need to be a member to view it, so a direct link to the thread is a little annoying to include. If you’re a residential designer who uses ArchiCAD, it’s a great group to

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Fixing Error Messages and Ugliness with the Attribute Manager

This is the first time I’m cross posting something I wrote on BIM Engine here as well. If you use ArchiCAD, you’ll want to read about the Attribute Manager. And you’ll also want to download the .aat file that I provide at the end of the post. Be warned it’s a long post and it might require more than one reading. Please post comments there rather than here. Fixing Error

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How BIM can Bankrupt Your Firm

Why do some firms embrace BIM and rave about its benefits while other firms try BIM and fail miserably? We all know this diagram: But here’s another diagram. This is the one that describes firms that panic, firms that succumb to Fear, Uncertainty, and Dread (FUD), firms that after one or two attempts let their boxes of Revit 2010 get dusty on the shelves or backslide into using ArchiCAD 12

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More lessons from children’s TV

Don’t talk about the brontosaurus in a room full of dinosaur lovers The other day on Sesame Street they did a segment on dinosaurs. They mentioned a brontosaurus. Dinosaur Train would never mention a brontosaurus. Why? Because it’s not a real thing. It was a mistake from the late 19th century. It just happens to be super famous. If you’re looking for information, make sure you are using the right

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My first overtly ArchiCAD vs Revit Post, sort of.

  I’m trying some new things on the blog, now that I have more time and more outlets for writing about ArchiCAD. So just like last week, I’m trying for 5 posts in 5 days. And to have them all within a theme. Here’s #1. So of course I’m going to be horribly biased…. but here’s a few thoughts. I think both ArchiCAD and Revit are easy programs to learn,

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Advice from one of my ArchiCAD Heroes

Remember my recent ArchiCAD Heroes post? In it, I mentioned my five favorite posters on the ArchiCAD-Talk Forum. If you haven’t taken the time to start searching out their posts and learning from their experience, that’s okay. In time I hope you will. One of those top five, Djordje Grujic, wrote an article for Architectural Evangelist. In the article he talks about the mind-set and decisions required to make the

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ArchiCAD Heroes

Shoegnome would never have existed if I wasn’t such a huge fan of Onland.info. I’ve gushed over James Murray’s blog before. He stopped updating his site about the time I started writing mine, so I feel a responsibility to carry the torch he held for so many years. Most of his 679 posts are still just as relevant now as they were when James wrote them. When I was teaching

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