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From Film to Digital Cameras & a Free Copy of OrthoGraph Architect 3D v7

August 16, 2013

I talk a lot about the future of practicing architecture. I’m really interested in how our tools and processes evolve. I am curious about what common frustrations we will soon no longer need to deal with. A lot of these changes are subtle. Others are a bit more overt. Here’s one example that comes to mind: the switch from film to digital cameras when photographing existing site conditions. Are you

Revit 2014 & ArchiCAD 17, please meet your friend SketchUp Pro 2013

June 3, 2013

So this is big news. Lots to read. I was too busy with my impending move to get this out the day everyone else was freaking out about SketchUp Pro 2013. But that’s okay, news like this deserves to be mulled over. And I think it’s going to take a while, especially with what my Summer is looking like, to digest all the implications of this new release. In general

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

April 17, 2013

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

Quick and Pretty Renderings From ArchiCAD

January 24, 2013

The above rendering is fairly typical of what I show clients these days. It’s not the most complex image, but it’s fast and easy. And you could imagine that with a little more effort scalies, trees, etc. could be easily added. The final rendering is a combination of images from the Sketch Rendering Engine and the Internal Rendering Engine found in ArchiCAD. The images were combined in a 3rd party

Tekla, SketchUp, & now Vico… Trimble keeps gobbling up BIM and proto-BIM applications

November 2, 2012

I guess this is a week for exciting corporate purchases. It’s all over our corner of the internet. Back in April 2012 Trimble bought SketchUp from Google. And now In November 2012 Trimble has acquired Vico. And this of course all comes just a year or so after Trimble bought Telka. I don’t really have any additional commentary. It’s all just VERY interesting. I wonder who they’ll buy 6

My first overtly ArchiCAD vs Revit Post, sort of.

September 10, 2012

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,

PolyCount Add-On and Airships

October 16, 2011

In preparation for my BIMx entry, I spent some time reading up on BIMx Optimization on the ArchiCADwiki. One of the suggestions is to download the PolyCount Add-On. You can download it here. When you’re building a file for export to BIMx, paying attention to polygons is important. Two interesting things to note here. Delete everything you can’t see. For this model I deleted footings, some bathroom fixtures and trusses

From AutoCAD (to ArchiCAD) to SketchUp… a race

August 21, 2011

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 who is an avid SketchUp user. We both wanted to work in the program we knew best. After I modeled the first site it became evident that it was incredibly

MNAUG #12 Recap

March 13, 2011

Our March 2011 usergroup meeting was one of my favorites: there was a wonderful turn out and a lot of lively discussion. The main topic for this meeting was what is everyone doing to leverage BIM / ArchiCAD to get and retain clients? While we did cover a lot of how-to stuff, it was all structured around that basic question. BIM offers a lot of great opportunities. Better coordinated documents,

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