Archicad for Residential

[Anonymous]

I am looking at purchasing Archicad for single family residential design. I have a couple of questions for those of you using Archicad for residential:

1. How user friendly have you found the software?
2. Are you self taught or have you taken training?
3. How have you found service/tech support?

I would appreciate any responses.

[Dwight]

If you list the other options you are considering, experienced users here can make comparisons.

You would be advised to have at least two days of one-on-one training - one to start and one a month later. Archicad is an application where lateral thinking tricks are important. You learn these tricks by watching.


Is there much of a user group in Saskatoon? Now that all the oil sands workers are building houses there it must be busy days for you.

[Anonymous]

I am looking at Archicad or Revit, but am leaning to Archicad b/c it will run on my mac without using Bootcamp. I have experince with Revit and it took a few months to really learn what I was doing with it, still haven't mastered it and have been using it for 2-3 years off & on.

There isn't a real user group that I know of here in Saskatoon, no other users that I know of but my reseller was willing to get me in touch with other users within the province.

Times are busy here for sure!

[Anonymous]

One-on-one training is best in terms of getting up to speed the quickest, but it useful to have a look at the interactive training guides first to help you get a general understanding of the software.

Downloadable here -

http://www.graphisoft.com/products/archicad/ac11/itg/

Also have a look at the 'Virtual Tutor' video dvd thing.

You can probably get one from your reseller relatively cheaply. Further details here -

http://www.archicadtutorials.com/

[Anonymous]

thanks for the info...much appreciated

[Steve Jepson]

prariegirl wrote:
I am looking at purchasing Archicad for single family residential design. I have a couple of questions for those of you using Archicad for residential:

1. How user friendly have you found the software?
2. Are you self taught or have you taken training?
3. How have you found service/tech support?

I would appreciate any responses.

1. ArchiCAD is very user friendly. Very intuitive.

2. Self taught. No training or manuals needed.

3. You wont need them.

[Anonymous]

thanks Steve, good to know

[Steve Jepson]

Self taught is actually not an accurate way to say that.

This forum is where I learned what I could not figure out on my own.

Laura Yanoviak just tought me something very important today that would not have slipped by me for so long if I had even a small amount of formal trainig.

I am very happy to participate in this forum. I wish I would have known about it sooner. I had been using ArchiCAD for years before I discovered it.

I know you will find this forum to be a very valuable resource.

Watching someone who knows how to use the program is with out question the best way to learn ArchiCAD.

Do you have any other CAD experience or is this your first program?

[Anonymous]

I have been doing residential design for 9 years using a few different programs over the years...Softplan, ADT, Chief Architect, Revit and ADT. So you could say I have some CAD experience.

[Steve Jepson]

Perfect! I was very good with SoftPlan at one time. I used to do some training for them. I was selling it when I was sent an ArchiCAD demo so I would know how to make the sales pitch against ArchiCAD. I jumped ship and have never been sorry.

You will be up and running in no time with ArchiCAD.

It will be like rubbing your head and patting your stomach at the same time for a while, but after your first project you will be glad you found ArchiCAD.

There is no SoftTalk, dimensions are not fully parametric, and you can't create special formulas for your schedules, but you will find that this is not such a bad thing.

If you find you can't do something with ArchiCAD, it is probably because with ArchiCAD you don't need to do it that way.