Minnesota ArchiCAD Usergroup Meeting (January 30th, 2012)

Posted: January 17th, 2012 | Author: Jared Banks | Filed under: MNAUG | | No Comments »

It’s been a while, so let’s get together and talk ArchiCAD…

Date:

Monday January 30, 2011 | 6:30PM – 8:30 PM |

Location:
Wilkus Architects
11487 Valley View Rd
Eden Prarie, MN

Many of us have been using ArchiCAD 15 for half a year now. I’m sure we’ll talk about what we’ve learned and how we’ve been liking it. Does anyone have any projects they’d like to share? I know I have a few. And over the past few months I’ve learned a bunch of new tricks –both productivity and modeling techniques. So I’ll share as many of those as I can. As always feel free to bring anything you want to share and any questions you might have. We’ll have a projector and at least one machine with AC11-15. If there’s anything specific you’d like to learn about, or you want more information, feel free to e-mail me before hand.

September 20th Minnesota ArchiCAD Usergroup

Posted: September 16th, 2011 | Author: Jared Banks | Filed under: MNAUG | Tags: Events | No Comments »

Date:
Tuesday September 20, 2011 | 6:30PM – 8:30 PM |

Location:
Wilkus Architects
11487 Valley View Rd
Eden Prarie, MN

All about ArchiCAD 15. I started my first project in ArchiCAD 15 the first week in August and I know I’m going to have a lot to share. How about the rest of you? What do you think? Let’s get together and share. For anyone not on 15, this will be a great opportunity to learn about all the great advances. Can’t wait to learn? Check out this recent blog post about all the little changes in ArchiCAD 15.

As always feel free to bring anything you want to share and any questions you might have. We’ll have a projector and at least one machine with AC11-15. If there’s anything specific you’d like to learn about, or you want more information, feel free to e-mail me before hand.

May 17th Minnesota ArchiCAD Usergroup

Posted: May 1st, 2011 | Author: Jared Banks | Filed under: MNAUG | Tags: Events | No Comments »

Date:
Tuesday May 17, 2011 | 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM |

Location:
Wilkus Architects in Eden Prairie, MN
11487 Valley View Rd
Eden Prarie, MN

There will be a presentation on the curtain wall tool and hopefully a short presentation on how ArchiCAD was used in the University of Minnesota Solar Decathlon House. I’m sure we will also discuss tips, tricks, examples of members’ recent work, and anything else people want to know about. I know I’ve been learning some cool new modeling methods that I’ll be sharing. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to learn about or share, let me know.

MNAUG #12 Recap

Posted: March 13th, 2011 | Author: Jared Banks | Filed under: Long Posts, Meeting Recaps, MNAUG | Tags: BIM philosophy, BIMx, Production, Rendering, SketchUp | 12 Comments »

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, clash detection, and other ways to minimize problems in the field. Ease of prototyping various design options, incorporating energy modeling and sustainable design options via EcoDesigner and similar programs, and the myriad other ways to improve the design process. In our local group most of us have found the biggest advantage of BIM / ArchiCAD to be improved communication with the client via better visualization options.

One of our members shared his experience using CrazyBump to develop normal maps for use in Artlantis. I don’t know enough to say whether the normal maps built in CrazyBump would work in the Lightworks rendering engine in ArchiCAD, but I don’t see why not. There’s a short video on the CrazyBump website showing how it works. Very cool and very easy. Maxwell Render was again brought up as a counterpoint to Artlantis. I need to get someone to do a presentation on that so we can see how cool it is. I think we’ll also aim to do another presentation on Artlantis this fall, as there is a lot of interest in learning more about that program. And it sounds like our presenter from last time has learned a whole bunch since the original tutorial he gave.

Animation and walk-throughs were also discussed. There was a post on the forum about creating an animation of a section that moves through a building. This can be done by using an object that moves with each frame as an operator on the rest of the building. However my two-year-old daughter Madeleine decided to get up at 6:30 am and not take a nap, so my brain is a bit fuzzy and I can’t find the post. A similar animated view of the building should be possible with this add-on. One local firm uses video conferencing software to do remote walk throughs with the ArchiCAD model. Most of us have done walk-throughs for coworkers or clients in person using this method. It’s good, but not great.

Over the past few months I’ve had a lot of success with Virtual Building Explorer (VBE) and I shared my experiences with the group. For those that aren’t familiar with VBE, it creates a stand-alone model that requires no special software to run and no secret knowledge to explore. The files are typically small enough to e-mail or otherwise transmit over the internet and are self-executing. The clients I’ve sent VBE files to have loved them. And as a testament to how useful VBE models are to understanding a design, for the first time in my career I can finally hold conversations with my family about my work. And perhaps the best part is that I’ve found providing VBE models for clients to be an additional revenue stream. If anyone wants to see an example of the VBE models I’ve created, wants more info about creating one, or is interested in getting Virtual Building Explorer send me an e-mail (sorry that last line sounds a little sales-y; it’s just such a killer app).

I’ve talked about hidden line renderings before, but I learned something new this week which I thought was really cool. Or perhaps another way to say it is, some dots were connected for me this week. One of the local firms uses the Sketch Rendering engine to produce all of their elevations. It’s a great solution to two of the majors complaints about computer elevations. If your aim is construction documents, your drawings tend to look cold and unsexy. If you create beautiful drawings, you’re spending too much time adding redundant 2D fixes or creating drawings that are tangential to the working drawings/model that you have to do and don’t necessarily further your understanding of the design. The Sketch Rendering engine allows you to dirty up your elevations without wasting time. Go to Parallel Projection Settings, set your camera to look straight at the elevation, set the sun to a pretty angle, and render (this also works great with sections and could also work for plans from the 3D window). I did three quick studies below. One is the elevation as it shows up in the construction documents. This elevation has no 2D additions. The line weights are what the model says, nothing extra. (surprise, surprise  when the contractor saw the drawings he wasn’t freaked out that there was no heavy airline). The second image is the same elevation rendered with materials and full color with the internal rendering engine. The last image is the Sketch Rendering engine. The 2nd and 3rd images each tell a different story. The colored image looks done. You see the image and believe that’s the final design. There’s a confidence to it. The sketch image though suggests more the essence of the building than the final solution. One understands the design, but its roughness hints at flux. It leaves room for interpretation. Same model in all three images, just different expressions and different accents. What I find so wonderful about these various options is that I can design and develop the model however is best for my own processes. And I have a variety of outputs available to me during the entire duration of the project (from first sketch to post construction) that can accurately represent the project, highlighting permanence, uncertainty, confidence, transience, etc.

Elevation from construction set (100% 3D, no 2D!)

Elevation using the Internal Rendering Engine

Elevation using the Sketch Rendering Engine

There was a lot more covered–our meetings usually end at 8:00 pm, this one continued until closer to 8:30 pm. We talked more about 3D documents, .ifc data exchange with Autodesk products, Telka BIMsight, and EcoDesigner. Some of us also mused about point clouds and 3D printing. I’ve also been working back and forth with SketchUp and shared my experiences with exporting a site model from ArchiCAD 14 to SketchUp 8 Pro (the site was incredibly faster to build in ArchiCAD than in SketchUp). But many of those topics deserve a blog post to themselves, especially the ArchiCAD to Sketchup process which is a nice continuation of this post.

March 8th Minnesota ArchiCAD Usergroup (Next week!!!)

Posted: February 27th, 2011 | Author: Jared Banks | Filed under: MNAUG | Tags: Events | No Comments »

Date:
Tuesday March 8, 2011 | 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM |

Location:
Wilkus Architects in Eden Prairie, MN

Among other things, we will be discussing opportunities for leveraging ArchiCAD to help get and retain work. It’s a big topic and a little different from what we usually discuss. But there are a lot of ideas floating around the group and it’d be great to share. And as always bring anything you want to share and any questions you might have. We’ll have a projector and at least one machine with AC11-14. If there’s anything specific you’d like to learn about, feel free to e-mail me beforehand.

MNAUG #11 Recap

Posted: January 29th, 2011 | Author: Jared Banks | Filed under: Long Posts, Meeting Recaps, MNAUG | Tags: Material Takeoffs, Schedules, SketchUp | 5 Comments »

Winter Usergroup meetings in Minnesota are an adventure–snow, ice, sub-zero temperatures. I’m always so glad to see a mixture of new and old faces make the trip. This month, even with a location snafu, we had about 1/3 newcomers. Below are some highlights. There’s plenty more that we covered (complex profiles, attribute manager, library updates in v14, among other topics), but this post is already my longest to date.

I walked everyone through the steps of doing a material takeoff, based on the AECBytes article I mentioned in this earlier post. The process of setting up the materials and extracting the information is unbelievably simple. There are definitely some finer points I need to learn about, streamline, and fit into how I work at SALA Architects. But the hardest part about it has nothing to do with ArchiCAD. I don’t know much about material takeoffs. I need to learn. After reading the AECBytes article, anyone can follow the steps. Need to know the number of studs @ 24″ O.C. in a wall? Set the component you build to count .5 studs per foot. It’s pretty much that simple. Great now I can figure out the number of studs in all my designs. But wait. Is .5 the right number? Maybe it should be .55 studs per foot. Perhaps it’s really .8 studs per foot once you account for openings, plates, double studs, jack studs, king studs, overbuilt corners, etc. I don’t know. The point being, while material takeoffs are way more straightforward in ArchiCAD than I ever imagined, they’re only as accurate and smart as I am. My models are good. So they’re not the weak link. I am. I need to learn about estimating and use my model to improve my assumptions. And then use my assumptions to improve my model. Any contractors in Minnesota want work with me on this? Even if I modeled every stick and sheet in the building, that presumes I am right to place all those studs and boards correctly. Which I promise you I wouldn’t. And besides modern life is built on estimating and extrapolating data, not absolute knowledge (we don’t actually count every person to get a global population or count every star in the night sky).

In the spirit of schedules, lists, and takeoffs, I also showed everyone how to make a quick plumbing schedule from scratch. That was fun, especially because I’d never technically done it before! But I think the need for schedules like that is creeping closer and closer in my own work. A good start would be to use ArchiCAD to coordinate all the owner provided furniture and fixtures. Why not use ArchiCAD to keep track of that stuff and make sure it fits in the design? The schedule might not show up on the final drawings, but it would improve coordination during the design process. This conversation also made me realize I need to improve and update my window and door schedules. They’re both based on my v9 workflow. Outdated is an understatement.

We spent some time talking about gravity. ArchiCAD gravity, not real gravity. Gravity in ArchiCAD allows objects to intelligently be placed on the top of what’s below them. Doing a visualization model and want to put a vase of flowers on the kitchen island? Turn on gravity. Adding toilets, cabinets, and furniture to a half story? Turn on gravity. That’s actually how our discussion of gravity started: someone asked about the best way to do half stories. General consensus was to put 2 half stories on the same ArchiCAD story so that they show up easily on the same sheet. Putting half stories on different ArchiCAD stories creates more trouble than it’s worth.

Everyone also shared where they find objects online. At least one person in our group has had a lot of success with Google 3D Warehouse. He downloads the objects, saves them in SketchUp as a .3ds file and then opens the .3ds file in ArchiCAD. From his experience the objects come into ArchiCAD very clean and usable. I’m going to experiment with this as well. It’d be great to find some free SketchUp trees that work well in ArchiCAD. I very much look forward to a stronger SketchUp/ArchiCAD connection. And the project I’m working on between late February and late June will require that I interface with SketchUp a lot. So in the coming months I’m going to learn a lot more about working between the two programs. I’ve already had success with exporting a mesh that I created from a .dwg site plan into SketchUp via a .3ds file. The contoured site was also begun by someone else in SketchUp. It took less than 45 minutes to build the site in ArchiCAD from a surveyor’s .dwg and clean it up in SketchUp. By that point the .dwg file in SketchUp was almost ready to build 3D objects from. First head to head ArchiCAD vs SketchUp ‘battle’ that I’ve been in and it’s ArchiCAD 1 SketchUp 0. Just saying…

But back to finding objects online. An old coworker and I shared a story about downloading equipment to populate a public works building we worked on. Some equipment we built, others we found. We had no budget for downloads, so we were only looking for free objects. We found a great dumptruck, but it had one problem. Half of it was red. We could control the materials on the right side, but not the left. And the object was Russian, so we couldn’t understand any of the options and I wasn’t yet capable enough to open the object and explore the GDL. I probably could fix it now, two years later. But that’s not going on the to do list when I get my time machine. If I get my time machine.