New user, whats the best way to get up & going?

[Anonymous]

Hi guys
A very mature age student here, I'm running a trial version of the student version of archicad. Starting a course next year, Advanced Diploma of Building Design & I want to be well & truly up & running by the time the course starts. I've used a very simple Cad program for the past 15 yrs (DesignCad) it suited me as I taught myself to use it & it was almost like using the old T scare & pencil, one line at a time. Designed & built quite a few project using it, but getting a bit long in the tooth, time to start working smarter, body won't hold up for ever, so intending to do a lot more design work. ArchiCad does not seem to offer a tutorial for learning the basics, I've played around with the couple that are available & their fine, but not teaching you the very nuts & bolts. I've noticed a guy, Eric Bobrow offering tutorials ( for a price) is that the way to go or is there other ways to get started

[Anonymous]

You could try looking here: http://www.archicadwiki.com/FrontPage
In the upper left corner, type in the word tutorial.
Or: http://archicadstuff.blogspot.com/
Or: http://www.shoegnome.com/tag/tutorials/
Or: http://www.youtube.com/user/archicad

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply, I've loaded the project by Frank Lloyd Wright & I'm working away at it. But again, as with all of the other tutorials seemingly available it's starting the lessons with all of the basic works already done. The library is loaded for you, you don't have to create it? The footprint of the project is traced from an existing copy to give you reference points. Maybe I'm just to old school, I would prefer to learn how to do all of these things myself, not just copy them from an existing location. Sure I can understand that this will take time, a lot of time, but I like to know the why & how of what I'm doing & in understanding the actual nuts & bolts, then I can utilize the shortcuts with an understanding of the roots of them.
The way I taught myself with my old DesignCad was to sit down with the user manual & step by step, page by page, line by line learnt how the program worked, is that type of basic learning not available or just not practical?

[Rakela Raul]

just start building your dog house, you will see !!

and after that your be the rest of your life learning and forgetting and probably you will never use the software to its fullest.

in short, read less and practice more

[Anonymous]

Rakela wrote:
.... after that your be the rest of your life learning and forgetting and probably you will never use the software to its fullest.

That rings a bell!
Especially the forgetting