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.

Work Environments in ArchiCAD – part 1

Posted: March 19th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Long Posts, Shoegnome on YouTube | Tags: , | 19 Comments »

Thought about your ArchiCAD Work Environment recently? This week I'm trying something different (no real surprise, right?). In honor of setting up my new home office, I'm going to talk about my ArchiCAD Work Environment. I'm not going to cover everything about it, but let's see what I can share under eight minutes. Here's one spoiler: If your info box is stretched horizontally across the top of the screen like ArchiCAD has it right out of the box... guess what? You're wrong. And you need to stop using it that way. I'm open to hearing arguments, but I'll be impressed if I hear a good one. Bonus [Read More...]

Top 20 Keyboard Shortcuts

Posted: December 11th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Long Posts | Tags: , , , | 9 Comments »

All new users I work with invariably ask me a question followed by a request. Is there a list of all the keyboard shortcuts? Yes; go to Work Environments, Shortcut Schemes, Keyboard Shortcuts, click Show Shortcut List in Browser. Once they see the seven pages of keyboard shortcuts, the following request is made: You should make a list of the most important shortcuts. Three years later... done. Some of these are old shortcuts that I've brought forward from as far back as version 9, others are customized, and some are native to the latest versions. I honestly don't remember which is which. But whether [Read More...]

Eyeballs and Locks

Posted: August 11th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Short Posts | Tags: , | No Comments »

I've set the keyboard shortcut for the Quick Layers palette to 'control + X'. The filtering capabilities of this little palette are huge and easy to use. I am always isolating layers to do quick moves. When working on a complex model (or drawing), very often the answer is to turn off layers, make the changes, and turn layers back on. The Show/Hide toggle is great for sifting through what you want to change. I'll turn on all the layers, then turn off everything layer by layer that I want to change (I've set hide layer to 'H'). Once that's done I'll click the Show/Hide toggle and everything [Read More...]