Tutorials

Guest Blogger Djordje Grujic: Untangling the Arcane Secrets of GDL

“The sea is dangerous and its storms terrible, but these obstacles have never been sufficient reason to remain ashore… Unlike the mediocre, intrepid spirits seek victory over those things that seem impossible… it is with an iron will that they embark on the most daring of all endeavours… to meet the shadowy future without fear and conquer the unknown.” Ferdinand Magellan, Explorer (c.1520) Every time I think of GDL, the

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The Basics of making a Movie from ArchiCAD

I’d been meaning to record a video on the basics of making a movie from ArchiCAD for a long time. Yesterday a former colleague and friend was asking where she could find such a video to teach her how to make a quick fly-through movie in ArchiCAD… 24 hours later… here’s the video on Cameras and Camera Paths in ArchiCAD. As always, I’m sure I didn’t cover everything. If you

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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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The Organizer… aka the Navigator’s Big Brother

I actually mean both Big Brother as in your wise male sibling who was born before you AND that all seeing eye of some over arching organization. The Organizer is pretty awesome and powerful like that. I cover a lot in this ArchiCAD tutorial video. I talk about the Navigator, the Organizer, the differences between the View Map, Project Map, Layout Book, and Publisher. I go over the basics of

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Quick and Pretty Renderings From ArchiCAD

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

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ArchiCAD Tutorial Videos on YouTube

Fun Fact: YouTube was officially launched in November 2005. I first learned ArchiCAD in January 2006. While writing my post on ArchiCAD heroes, I realized I was defining them very narrowly. I wanted to focus that post on those shining lights that kept me going when I was a new user, deep in despair, and feeling alone. Those giants showed me the way. But that’s only part of the story.

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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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Morph Pet Palette Madness

While doing some experimentation on an ArchiCAD 15 file that I’d opened in ArchiCAD 16, I came across a weird quark with the Morph Tool. The pet palette for the Morph Tool wasn’t showing me all the options. I was bewildered and annoyed. I wasn’t sure what was going on and I just wanted ArchiCAD to work the way I knew it should. I was pissed. Fortunately I did what

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