Remember your first project isn’t going to take advantage of every aspect of Archicad. Show it to an Archicad expert and ask if they think it’d be a good one to start with. When choosing your first project, go with something comfortable and known. I once had a boss decide that a coworker’s first Archicad project would be one with a super complex roof where all the columns were multi-trunked trees that the timber framer found while walking through the forest. And if the project can be on the less complex end of your standard work, that’s even better. If you do tenant build-outs, it should be one of those, not the pro-Bono work you agreed to do for a former client. If you do houses, it should be a house, not the random dentist’s office someone asked you to design. The project should be a typical project for your firm. Which brings me to the second aspect of this piece of advice: choose your first live project wisely. Equally important, if you are recreating a project that is prototypical for your office, you’ll be learning how to do the things you’ll need to do in the future. You therefore get to focus on how to work within Archicad. What’s great about this is that you aren’t thinking about the design or the details. To learn Archicad, I highly recommend taking an old project and redoing it in Archicad. So in an effort to save everyone some time, here’s a list of things you should do if you want to learn Archicad (after of course going to and downloading a trial version for free, if you don’t already own Archicad): 1-Pick a good first project. But I don’t remember everything I’ve written, and I don’t expect you to either.

If you’ve read all seven hundred(ish) blog posts and articles that I’ve written since 2010 (this is number one hundred and one on BIM Engine in case you were wondering), you’ve probably come across much of this advice.

And because I am who I am, I often drop everything I’m doing and respond, whether I’m asked via the Internet, over the phone, or in person. This article was created by Jared Banks “I want to learn Archicad…what should I do?”

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