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.

Korean Professional Video Game Players & ArchiCAD

Posted: July 10th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Short Posts | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

Can you make a living playing video games? If you work hard. It also doesn't hurt if you're South Korean. Want to hear more about that lifestyle? There's a great Tech Stuff podcast about it. What does this have to do with ArchiCAD? Keyboard short cuts. I've talked about them before and I'll talk about their importance again. Watch the following video. The entire thing is pretty mesmerizing, but all you really need to watch is the first 10 to 15 seconds. Seems sped up, doesn't it? It's not. If you want to be the best at Starcraft 2 or some other competitive real time computer game, you [Read More...]

How much do you know about Groups?

Posted: April 24th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Long Posts | Tags: , , , | 10 Comments »

Let's start with the basics and get a bit more complex. 1. The enable/suspend groups button should always be visible.  If the button looks like the image below, then groups are enabled. Otherwise they are suspended. 2. It's a good idea to have shortcuts for enable/suspend groups, group, and ungroup. This is what I use: command+G: group option+G: enable/suspend groups command+option+G: ungroup 3. When groups are enabled, you move the group as one unit. When groups are suspended, you can move individual elements within the group while maintaining the existence of the group. [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...]

Bass Lessons

Posted: November 1st, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Long Posts | Tags: , , | No Comments »

I’ve been a bassist for over 20 years (over two-thirds of my life). As college approached and  I was deciding what to do with my life, I had two options: professional musician or architect. Much of my life could be described as a balancing act between musician and architect. The tipping point from one to the other happened during my junior year of college, though I didn’t notice it for another few years. Currently my bass playing is approaching a nadir (at least that’s what I tell myself). Between being an architect at SALA Architects and running Shoegnome, my bass playing has all but vanished. [Read More...]

Split, who knew?

Posted: October 8th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Short Posts | Tags: , | 4 Comments »

The split command (cmd + opt + I is my keyboard shortcut, the button looks like a little red axe) works for walls, slabs, meshes, roofs, beams, fills, lines, polylines, splines, arcs/circles, and zones. Why did I just learn this today? I thought it was just for 2D objects. Good to know.

Operators

Posted: August 18th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Short Posts | Tags: , | 3 Comments »

I keep the majority of my operators on a hidden layer called Operators. However it’s a pain to turn on the layer when I need it on. In times past I’d either go to the layers, select operator, turn it on, or I’d go to an “all on” layer combination, or a special layer combination that was a “3D + operators,” or I’d select a slab, change it to the operator layer, then start drawing, click yes, turn on hidden layer... all of these are slow and annoying. The last one, though, led me to a great solution. Favorites. One of my saved favorites is a generic slab on the operator layer. [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...]

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