I am very, very New to ArchiCAD. Suggestions?

[Anonymous]

I am a draftsman at a Structural Engineering Firm. I have worked in AutoCAD for nearly 10 years and our company is ready to switch to 3D. My boss is about to put me on ArchiCAD for the first time. I have no experience what so ever except for going from view to view and scrolling in and out in the demo house given to you.

I will be asked to draw a very simple house or garage for my first project. Basically a "Box".

I have 2 begginer questions:
1. I was wondering if any one has any tips or sugggestions. Maybe someone can refer me to any FREE online guides for the basics; Slabs , Footings, Walls, Roof and Floor Framing.

2. How do you transfer the project to AutoCAD if we get into a push for the job.

I realize that the questions are pretty broad but any info would be a huge help.
Thanks.

[TomWaltz]

I believe one of the best elementary tutorials is the "Learning Guide" included on the installation CD. It has very bite-sized chunks of information.

[Anonymous]

It is interesting to see some structural engineers adopting ArchiCAD. I have always felt that it is a good fit. In fact I have been working with an engineer in San Francisco to set up his model and drafting standards.

Tom is right about the basic intro. Since you are starting with a simple project, I recommend that you get some basic familiarity with the tools and just get started. Of course, a basic training course from your dealer could do a lot to fast track the process.

The only caution I would add is to make your model very accurate. Use the smart cursor, shift key constraints, and numeric entry to ensure that your walls, slabs, etc. are at precisely the right angles and the right lengths. Small errors tend to accumulate and can lead to major difficulties as the model gets more complex.

If you need to bail out to AutoCAD to finish up the drawings you can publish them all from ArchiCAD quite easily. Look in the manual under "Publisher." Of course it would be best if you can complete the work in ArchiCAD, so I suggest that you get comfortable with the drafting methods in ArchiCAD.

[Anonymous]

Matthew wrote:
It is interesting to see some structural engineers adopting ArchiCAD. I have always felt that it is a good fit. In fact I have been working with an engineer in San Francisco to set up his model and drafting standards...

DZ wrote:
... I was wondering if any one has any tips or sugggestions. Maybe someone can refer me to any FREE online guides for the basics; Slabs , Footings, Walls, Roof and Floor Framing. ...

I think it is interesting to see engineers adopt ArchiCAD as well. Hopefully DZ can give some feedback on his ongoing experiences/impressions with ArchiCAD. While I believe it is a "good fit" as well, I've long wanted to see some more intelligent tools for structurally related tasks.

It would be nice to see some more fully integrated/complimentary wall, floor and roof framing tools...As far as foundations go, I would like to see some better tools for stepped footings, stem walls, basement walls, etc....And how about some more integrated ways to handle slab-on-grade projects including monolithic foundations with thickened areas, post tensioning ,etc?

As more and more engineers adopt the software and attempt to work it into their unique process flows, we as well as Graphisoft, might all learn some better ways to enhance the basic ArchiCAD tools and library objects available.

Dan K