Your success with Archicad depends largely on your personality. I'll bet that after twelve years of experience, you are offered this work because of your building technology skill rather than as a pure line maker, so if you are curious about the culture of leveraging your linework into building elements and exploiting those elements automatically into building views, this change will please you.
Archicad turns architecture into a video game.
An integrated model improves accuracy, productivity and saves time when revising design since all views update whenever a change is made.
We often think that AutoCAD skills are a barrier when bringing Archicad to a new firm. Usually the Archicad champion first takes new, untrained people and teaches them the BIM process. When the AutoCAD guys see the advantages of view integration, they throw away their pocket protectors, drool bibs and green visors and start to have some fun.
You'll be frustrated because Archicad demands that you think in terms of building parts instead of linework and symbols - it demands architectural thought. It takes longer to make a plan in Archicad than AutoCAD because Archicad's plan view is not a plan, but is an abstract top view of a model. For example, when making a wall in Archicad, the user SHOULD consider the wall's thickness, height and assembly - rather than as just two lines with a fill inside. The payback for deeper consideration is automatic generation of elevations and sections. The other payback is that the entire model assembly can be stretched and edited as a unit so revisions show up everywhere.
But you need not make all of this up from scratch each time. Archicad's productivity is heavily reliant on templates and pre-selections: "favorites." Every project needs some pre-planning - What wall types might you use? What size might the building be? What story height might there be? How many stories?
You just don't sit down and throw down some lines.
For each building type, the firm should have appropriate composite walls in its template, perhaps already lined up for selection as project favorites. In this way, the user finds himself directly picking building elements rather than drawing abstract lines.
This is where the quantity calculation aspects takes over - In comparing design alternatives, Archicad provides volumetric data continuously. You can automatically compare materials used, building size, window area, etc between alternatives. It also tells you your errors quickly because when things don't line up in the model, it shows.
If you are a cryptic Autocad user - all commands and no menu, then ArchiCAD WILL present some drafting challenges. People whine on the forum about things like offsets and radii-making because of the way AutoCAD addresses these issues. Usually a forum member shows the new guy an entirely different way to manage the situation in fewer steps than with AutoCAD.
In Archicad, the "drawing" is not the end product as it is in AutoCAD, the Building Information Model is. I often imagine a science fiction scenario on a far away planet where hunchback architect priests run around with tetrahedron hats worshipping the unfathomable building model until Spock and Kirk show up. "He's dead, Spock. You get the laptop and Archicad key, I'll get the wallet."
The BIM is frustrating because it can't ever be perceived with a false confidence that a set of drawings can be seen. In AutoCAD, a bunch of guys go to work and draw. And there you have it, a bunch of lines and notes!
With BIM, it isn't until important sections and elevations are extracted that one can assess the degree of work completion. So, one day, there's some colored lines on a display, press one button [publish] and the layouts are complete. It takes faith.
Many employers hate this "not knowing" aspect because many hours can go into a project without the usual concrete linework one expects in a conventional office. And it is easy to fake a model, so no drinking on the job!
For instance, I recently designed an urban gateway in Dallas. Built the model in four days and selected, labeled and printed all of the design drawings in the eight hours before getting on the plane. I had confidence that the set would work.
Dwight Atkinson
