ARCHICAD Template for a Preferred Design Process

ARCHICAD Template for a Preferred Design Process

We all know that BIM has been introduced into construction industry by slogan of save time and money (plus being more efficient and accurate). But the real question is, how can we explain this slogan in real practice? Let’s look at MacLeamy diagram, the comparison of preferred design process (graph 4) and traditional methods (graph 3) shows that the main challenges and efforts of design process shift to the schematic and design development phase by using preferred design process. In other words, it means faster and more accurate documentations.

In many places, this preferred design process diagram has been explained as profits of using BIM and it is referred as BIM-based design process. So, let see what do we need to do to transform our design process to this preferred method workflow? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer, but thanks to great futures of ARCHICAD, we know how to help you to get there, and this is by creating a customized ARCHICAD templates that fit to your practice!

6 Important Points for ARCHICAD template creation:

To provide a better understanding and introducing the best practices to manage ARCHICAD templates, this week we have presented another session of ARCHICAD template management training as part of GRAPHISOFT BIM Classes for our ARCHICAD customers. Surprisingly we had more than 20 participants in our training session which honestly were more than what we expected, but Yes, the fact is we are not the only BIM gurus, whose have a thing for learning more BIM and ARCHICAD in middle of August!

Let me tell you more about the first session of this training! As I expected, discussions about planning and management strategies (before even opening ARCHICAD and going through technical explanation), were very interesting for ARCHICAD users, who already had their own template by practice and with no global strategy! The truth is if you want to gain productivity in ARCHICAD, you do not need to just have or create a template, but you need to have a specific template that addresses your entire practice and workflow. To go further in the matter, here I share some of the points that I discussed during the template creation class:

1. Decide who is going to be responsible for the template
2. Define your goals
3. Analyze your current workflow
4. Make sure you have the control of all the necessary tools in ARCHICAD
5. Define the timeline
6. Decide about main use cases of your final product (Template)

During the second session of the training, class attendees understood that a free-size template or a fix template reciepe doesn’t exist. Each practice has different norms and workflow (of course beside the standard regional or national workflows), which is very similar to a tailored dress that designed to fit perfectly one person. For example, understanding and adaptation of management logics behind different components such as attribute, display option or data and information management for template structure presented the opportunities to adapt ARCHICAD to your workflow with many ways. Below you can see a short video (~4 minutes) from session one:

Opinions and Feedbacks:

This level of understanding enabled our training group to have more mature discussion about how to implement standards and best practices into ARCHICAD template, rather than only technical features of the software. Here I have collected some feedbacks of our students during the class:

• "From my point of view, BIM classes cleared up doubts that seems simple at the beginning but later make lots of troubles for beginners. This class is great because it gives clarity and meaning to Essential trainings. I liked it a lot. Now it's time to try to customize the template and face the challenges" Iulian Stoinev

• "This training is very useful because without it someone may be exhausted from unlimited trial and errors. This training was a definitive guide where you can define a clear structure to assemble a template. Very Cool!!!" Diana Schneider

• "I see this course as an aid to organize myself and to consider aspects and resources of the program that I was not considering or was overlooked. Thank you!" Karola Ribera Hemmerle

• "Best practice and logic to work with ARCHICAD" Hugo Perera ferro

• "Thank you very much Ioanna! Very interesting training... For 3 years I didn’t work with ARCHICAD and now there are many advance topics that I need to learn, but more importantly is to know how to organize a project properly.” Zaida Pereira Lucas

These were my experiences of presenting ARCHICAD Template management workshops in 3 sessions (12 hours) during August 2019 (two sessions were this week and the third session will be during next week). During this training I went through many practical examples to support our ARCHICAD customers and help them to take most out of their ARCHICAD. If you want to be informed about our upcoming workshop, register in our newsletter or if you wish to attend to the next edition of ARCHICAD template management training or ARCHICAD BIM Management Essentials and Professionals, register here.

Just an important reminder: Hope you all know that if you are ARCHICAD customer with an active SSA (in Spain), you can attend to these training sessions free of charge and if you don’t have SSA and you want to learn more about BIM and ARCHICAD, you are welcome to benefit from our subscription plan of €99 per month to access to all the certified BIM and ARCHICAD trainings in Spanish.