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 myself ArchiCAD, I spent a lot of time on the ArchiCAD-talk forum. Okay let me rephrase that. With no one local to teach me, I learned from all the experts on the forum. That’s more accurate, though less romantic sounding. I still spend as much time as I can reading, scanning and learning.

When looking for posts to read, I have three tactics.

Search for topics that I am interested in.
Look for posts with attachments. Attachments usually mean pictures. And pictures mean that I get to see the problem and solution. I like that.
Read anything that I come across written by a group of users I refer to as my ArchiCAD Heroes. – TomWaltz, Link, Djordje, Karl Ottenstein, and laszlonagy are probably my top 5. Check out Tom Waltz’s avatar. That says it all. There are easily another dozen or so giants as well that I search out. I’m sure I’ll talk about them later. Tom and Link haven’t been active on the forum for some time, but all their posts are still amazing.

I really like the definition of hero from Wikipedia

Coined in English 1387, the word hero comes from the Greek “ἥρως” (heroes), “hero, warrior”,^[2] literally “protector” or “defender”^[3]

Warrior, Protector, Defender

Reading the posts of my ArchiCAD Heroes, I always feel that I am watching defenders of not just ArchiCAD and BIM, but of working intelligently, striving for improvement, and preparing for the future.

So who are your ArchiCAD Heroes?

19 Responses to "ArchiCAD Heroes"

samaimehdi says:

August 6, 2012 at 11:46 pm

I’m always a neophyte, I stated using ArchiCad for 5 or 6 month, and i learned a lot form “Eric Wilk and Yves houssier”, in the forum of Archicad French users : Fc-cadlink.com. Recently i visit regularly your blog (and tweets), there’s a lot interesting publication. So keep up the good work.

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1. Jared Banks says:
  
  August 7, 2012 at 7:44 am
  
  I sometimes forget about the very active forums in other languages. There’s also a big German language forum as well. For anyone else looking for those, there’s a list on the ArchiCADWiki here: http://archicadwiki.com/LinkCollection
  
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Frédéric DESCHAMP says:

August 7, 2012 at 9:04 am

David Nicholson Cole, Eric Wilk, Olvier Dentan, Claude Zanelli, Yves Houssier, Mirco Sorgato, Dwight Atkinson, Miguel Krippahl, Franck Beister, Ralph Wessel, Matthew Lohden, James Murray, Andy Thomson, David Maudlin

For the one who share their knowledges.

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1. Jared Banks says:
  
  August 7, 2012 at 9:15 am
  
  Yes, yes, and yes. Since we’re listing… Erika Epstein and Laura Yanoviak. I’ve had the opportunity to meet both Miguel and Erika this summer while in Boston. Like probably everyone else on this list, they were just as wonderful in person as online!
  
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wyroby betonowe says:

August 7, 2012 at 10:14 am

Thankyou for helping out, fantastic information.

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Frédéric DESCHAMP says:

August 8, 2012 at 8:52 am

And I beg my pardon for the numerous ArchiCAD Heroes I forget and the more numerous I don’t know…

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Jared Banks says:

August 8, 2012 at 8:55 am

Frédéric, I feel the same way!

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Miguel Krippahl says:

August 9, 2012 at 12:54 pm

I agree with the list, except that Miguel guy that Frédéric included.

What always made me be in awe of those guys is their willingness to share their knowledge freely. Without them, many ArchiCAD users would be much less productive and have much less fun with the software. And they do it for FREE!

Thank you all.

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1. Jared Banks says:
  
  August 9, 2012 at 1:08 pm
  
  Miguel, well said! When I wrote the list, my goal was to highlight many of the people who inspired me on the forum when I first starting using ArchiCAD in 2006. In many ways they are the unsung heroes of our community. But you hit the nail on the head. They have done so much for all of us for free. That is amazing. And it inspires me to keep on doing what I’m doing. As a fellow ArchiCAD blogger I know you know what I mean.
  
  Oh and I won’t be erasing your name from the list… sorry.
  
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Jared Banks says:

August 9, 2012 at 1:16 pm

So yes. Thank you to all the ArchiCAD Heroes!

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Fabio Cantu says:

August 15, 2012 at 7:48 am

Well, my heroes are (alphabetically arranged):
Eric Bobrow
Jared Banks
Miguel Krippahl (when he used to blog)
The guy from the archicad tutorials

I´ve learned ArchiCAD from you guys, thanks!

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Djordje says:

August 15, 2012 at 12:13 pm

Blushing here, Jared … thanks!

All of the above, each with a special field of expertise. Even more deserving of praise are the guys who run non-English blogs and cater to much smaller community.

Sadly, I do not have time to dedicate to ArchiCAD Talk any more … but keep on thinking about it.

And, when I was beginning in mid 90s, my definite hero was Laszlo Vertesi. But, as he would be the last to accept a pat on the back, I will do the same, acknowledge the praise and move on … there is a lot to do in the new BIM world.

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1. Jared Banks says:
  
  August 15, 2012 at 12:48 pm
  
  You are more than welcome! Yeah I am mostly clueless about the non-English speaking ArchiCAD work. Which is unfortunate. Google Translate is great, but I don’t always know what I should be translating.
  
  For anyone else reading, it’s worth noting that Laszlo Vertesi is now VP of Product Development at Graphisoft. If one of my hero’s heroes is in that position… well I think we’re in good hands.
  
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Djordje says:

August 15, 2012 at 2:59 pm

Well, yes … there are many people catering to the ArchiCAD community in languages other than English.

Another one of my heroes is Mr. Ivan Hajzler, the driving force behind hiCAD, the Graphisoft distributor for most of ex-Yugoslavia. He translated and published every ArchiCAD training manual since 4.55 I think, often at the company’s expense. It goes without saying that throughout Europe, the ArchiCAD stronghold worldwise, the local effort is what keeps it going.

Cheers to all the unsung heroes!

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Jared Banks says:

August 15, 2012 at 3:10 pm

The local efforts are huge, just like the unsung heroes. I think it’s also amazing how many devoted users end up working for Graphisoft in one way or another. I just met a new hire of GSNA last night. Great guy. Long time user. And he’s now super thrilled to be on the other side of the table. Miguel is another example. Long time user, great guy, awesome for the community, now an official part of the GSNA team. So cool.

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Gordana Radonić says:

August 16, 2012 at 5:39 am

I would like, in addition to his global engagement, to point out high activity of Đorđe Grujić in the popularization of CAD, and nowadays BIM technology, in the major area of ex-Yugoslavia. I will mention only three fields of his activity, which I find important for this area: Co-founder and active member of the nonprofit organization for the promotion of CAD in the late 80’s: CADUA. Author of numerous papers about architectural softwares, of which 64 have been published in prestige magazine PC Press, where 41 are about ArchiCAD. And last, but not least, his activity on forum Dizajn Zona (Design Zone), engaged in architecture among other interests, where he sent over 740 posts (with four threads counting over 52k views). I would say that numbers always say a lot.

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Karl Ottenstein says:

September 8, 2012 at 5:53 pm

Coming late to the party… Thanks for that, Jared! Blushing here, too.

When I learned ArchiCAD in 2000, there were no classes available and the internet and computers were painfully slow by today’s standards, so screen-sharing/WebEx/Skype, YouTube etc were only dreams.

Like you, I learned from the amazing international ArchiCAD community of users on the original ArchiCAD-talk hosted on ‘e-scribe’. Not sure if those posts are archived anywhere? Of those generous people, Djordje Grujic was at the top. David Nicholson-Cole was constantly available to teach and help with GDL – there and on the GDL list (and is still online – but less active). Dwight Atkinson many posts and books taught me both modeling nuances and the fine points of rendering, composition and communication through imagery. So many of those old e-scribe friends and genius users from around the world are not active any longer, but are well-remembered with gratitude. I still learn from not just all of the people mentioned in the replies here, but from almost every user on ArchiCAD-talk.

For me, becoming active in replying to ArchiCAD-talk posts was about ‘paying it forward’ – in thanks to all of the people on e-scribe and ac-talk from whom I learned – and to continue that ‘post graduate’ education in ArchiCAD: every problem someone has that isn’t something I’ve seen before is an opportunity to learn something new (or maybe just to confirm a bug).

Thanks for the call out, and thanks for your energy strengthening ArchiCAD education!

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1. Jared Banks says:
  
  September 10, 2012 at 8:18 am
  
  Karl, you are more than welcome! And thanks for sharing a little bit about your ArchiCAD learning history.
  
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ArchiCAD Tutorial Videos on Youtube | Shoegnome says:

January 7, 2013 at 9:38 am

[...] writing my post on ArchiCAD heroes, I realized I was defining them very narrowly. I wanted to focus that post on those shining lights [...]

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I really like the definition of hero from Wikipedia

Warrior, Protector, Defender

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