Office template and standards creation?

[Anonymous]

Looking for a matrix, flow chart or process checklist that describes step by step instructions for proper template creation and office standards creation. Can anyone provide such a thing?

[Anonymous]

Take a look at this.
http://www.archicadtemplate.com/

[Richard Morrison]

Or this: Office Standards

[Chazz]

My advice is to not waste time doing it yourself. The ArchiCAD MasterTemplate (AMT) that lec linked above is a lot to chew on but it has plenty of smarts too. Clearly, they spent a ton of time getting it right and it would take you weeks to replicate their efforts. The $200 or whatever they want for it is almost irrelevant if your goal is getting organized and standardized.

My main point is that while it is unlikely that ATM will be perfect right out of the box for every practice, it is much easier to start with ATM and subtract out what you don't need rather than to build something up from scratch.

I'm not a paid spokesman, just a satisfied customer. Go ATM.

[Karl Ottenstein]

I, too, would suggest considering the AMT as at least a valuable training tool to learn some of the things that a good template can offer, and to see one way of accomplishing that. You cannot really take a class with that much information for $200 ... but you need to dedicate at least a full day to studying it to benefit from it. There is a support forum to ask questions of other AMT users as well as the authors.

Various consultants like Link and me can visit your office to help you understand the implications of template decisions and guide you into the construction of one tailored to your needs. But, you are money ahead purchasing AMT and learning the lessons it has to offer, and digest them, before either proceeding on your own, or hiring one of us, if AMT itself does not meet your needs.

Cheers,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Thank you Richard Morrison for the pdf guide/book. It looks like a comprehensive road map to setting up our own standard. I noticed the screen captures are from ArchiCAD 9, but I think the methods behind the set up can be easily applied to ArchiCAD 12.

Question for AMT recommenders: Is this template geared towards a commercial project type? We primarily do custom residential and urban planning. Commercial projects currently make up little of our work load.

[Richard Morrison]

Patrick,

While there is a lot of good information in that PDF, I also want to add my endorsement of the AMT system. I don't think there is any way you could come up with so comprehensive a system for that amount of money. A real bargain, I think.

The AMT system is very flexible, and has templates for a a variety of levels of projects.

Just one caveat about this process, though. You can spend a LOT of time (and money) trying to make your templates conform exactly to "what you've been doing." Sometimes it's better to be a little more flexible and not fritter away time on what may be a marginal graphic benefit. Getting the section arrows to match exactly, say, to the current office standards may be possible, but potentially very expensive.

[Erich]

Patrick,

Our firm works solely on single family residential project. We purchased the AMT systems and it has paid for itself multiple times over. While there are elements in it that we did not need. It was easy enough, after coming to a clear understanding of the system, to weed out what we did not want and just keep what we did want. I would recommend it without hesitation.

[KeesW]

I purchased another well publicised (on this list) standard template add-on but found that it was too US-centric. For example, Storeys were set up with Ground floor storey 1, first floor storey 2, etc. I tried changing these but there were so many automatic links beteeen layers, composites, favourites, quickviews, etc., that getting them changed whilst maintaining the connections was very time consuming and not worth doing. How does this highly endorsed product cope with these universal conventions?