I love working in the BIM environment and helping other architects work in a smarter, more efficient manner. I started using ArchiCAD in 2006, founded the Minnesota ArchiCAD Usergroup in 2009, and began blogging about ArchiCAD in 2010. I'm always looking for guest bloggers who also want to share their experiences with ArchiCAD and BIM.

Pen Sets, Part Three

Posted: March 20th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Long Posts | Tags: , | 4 Comments »

If you haven't read Parts One or Two, you might want to start here. At SALA Architects, I use 6 pen sets on a standard project. In this post I'm going to discuss the basics of two: one pen set, for structural drawings: HALF TONE (STRUCTURAL) one pen set, for electrical drawings: HALF TONE (ELECTRICAL)     As I mentioned in Part One, setting a view to grayscale in the layout book isn't good enough for me. I want every pen to go gray uniformly. And I want some pens to not go gray at all. What I want is a half-tone background and nice black information on [Read More...]

Pen Sets, Part Two

Posted: February 20th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Long Posts | Tags: , | 1 Comment »

If you haven't read Part One, you might want to start here. At SALA Architects, I use 6 pen sets on a standard project. In this post I'm going to discuss the basics of two: one pen set, with colors: STANDARD (COLOR) one pen set, with colors but some different line weights: STANDARD (COLOR, PLANS) In Pen Sets, Part One I briefly discussed why color = line weight. Let’s continue that train of thought. The two major pens/ line weights in my drawings are pen 43/0.5 mm and pen 160/0.1 mm. In a drawing, if I see a green line I know it's .5 mm; if I see a pink line I [Read More...]

Pen Sets, Part One

Posted: January 16th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Long Posts | Tags: , | 9 Comments »

History lesson. My two favorite changes between version 9 and version 10 where the merging of Plotmaker into ArchiCAD and the arrival of multiple pen sets. There is a lot of power and utility with multiple pen sets. At SALA Architects, I use 6 pen sets on a standard project. In this post I'm going to discuss the basics of two: one pen set, with colors: STANDARD (COLOR) one pet set, in black but with the same line weights: STANDARD (BLACK) Drawings placed on layouts can be set to black and white, grayscale, or original colors. And they can use either the pen set saved with [Read More...]

Shop Drawings, an intermediate solution

Posted: November 19th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Short Posts | Tags: , , | 2 Comments »

Many years ago when I was an intern at Gensler in Houston, one of my jobs was transferring redlines on shop drawings. The lead architect marked up the original and then I made 5 copies by hand. Some shop drawings came across my desk today and I had a thought. At SALA, I've set up pen #20 to always print red (more on that later). What if I dropped a PDF of the shop drawings into a blank layout and then marked up the drawings with pen #20. I'd have a digital original and could easily e-mail the mark ups. I could print as many copies as necessary and all my notes would be legible. I could use search [Read More...]