Sample house - best practice

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I am new to Archicad and looking for a good sample house to download that shows best practice drawing technique and layouts.

The house should be drawn in 3D with all necessary elements and details with a full set of construction documents.

Perhaps some of the masters out there can post a drawing?

As a new user, I am looking for a good example to follow. I have done all the tutorials but feel they gloss over the main features and don't give real world examples. I still have lots of questions.

For instance, to draw foundations the tutorials show plain simple slabs with no slab thickening or footing. Do you experts really draw this way and leave the slab thickening for 2D detail drawings or do you specify that foundation slabs are made 'to engineers specifications'?

For walls, do you draw a timber framed wall with plaster lining, framing, insulation and exterior cladding all as one composite wall type? How is exterior cladding like weatherboard/clapboard shown? If not as part of the wall how do you make it look right in section drawings?

All help appreciated.

[Dwight]

You have asked a big set of questions, the answers to which are conditional. I doubt if anyone would share a real set of drawings.

But i agree that the tutorials do not appear to have the depth a beginner needs to learn how to detail a building - they merely schematically show tool operation.

Practice varies as to 3D model completeness. There is a large investment in making a complete model - many practitioners cheat, merely using 2D section enhancements or cut and paste.

Your better modelers make a Complex Profile for their Foundation/Footing/Drain, etc

As for the walls - check out the Composite Assemblies - a way to lay up fills in specific thicknesses to emulate wall assemblies.

[Anonymous]

Graeme
Take a look at this:
http://www.archicadtemplate.com/
I've been very happy with it.
It shows you how a master might put together
a small house.
The concepts are of course expandable
to complex projects.
Bier

[Anonymous]

It looks like Cadimage design suite has what I was looking for. It would be nice if this was part of the standard Archicad package.

[Gerald Hoffman]

Graeme wrote:
It looks like Cadimage design suite has what I was looking for.

The Design Suite expand on the functioning of the tools found in Archicad. They do not automatically do what you are wanting. The tools are only as good as the person using them. I have some of the tools in the design suite and use them a lot.

I have also purchased the Archicad template mentioned already. It has a lot of what you are looking for worked out in a way that is thought to be optimal by a couple of very experienced users. But as Dwight mentioned there are different ways of arriving at the end depending on how much time one has to put into the project. Budget is a constraint here also.

Merry Christmas,