this has to be the toughest program to learn alone

[Anonymous]

Hi i'm a student and about to give up on archicad. How are people supposed to learn this program. There's no decent tutorials except the pre-programmed soul less and useless ones that ship with graphisoft, (sound like steven hawkins narrates them). i'm at one of the best architectural schools in London,
and nobody knows how to use this program, students or lecturers. There is no classes anywhere,no books anywhere, It a shame iv always tried to promote this program whilst everyone else championed Rhino, Vectorworks or Microstation. I got Vectorworks a couple of days ago and in one night i know more about that program than months toying with archicad and i'm booked on a full day Vectorworks course( 80% student discount!) recommended by VW.
Truthfully feel iv wasted a lot of time on this un- user friendly program.

[Anonymous]

i have been a student to archi cad for two years now. its a steep learning curve that took dicipline and practice. i found some nice tutorials online for download, all video, and just went step by step. takes effort and practice, and it is well worth it

[stefan]

FWIW, I am teaching ArchiCAD at our university. I used to teach in a classroom with 20 computers and have a HTML-based overview.

The text was quite summarized and did not include every single button or dialog to click. But it explained things.

This year, I switched to video-tutorials. I made quite a series for ArchiCAD 16 (and a few other software applications). But they are in Dutch, as my students are Flemish and we use the regional ArchiCAD version with the Dutch/Belgian libraries from Kubus.


So far, I had positive reactions from my students. They can learn at their own pace. And we have Q&A sessions for peer tutoring, when they have gone through the tutorials. I'd rather spend time explaining things one-on-one than to repeat the same basics again and again while going too fast for some (so they open Facebook) or going to slow for others (so they open Facebook).


ArchiCAD is not the easiest software, but it is much more user-friendly and accessible than e.g. AutoCAD. However, you try to do quite complex things (create a 3D model of a building) from the very beginning in ArchiCAD, while in a first AutoCAD course you usually draw a few 2D lines... which obviously is easier to do.

[Richard Morrison]

I've watched a lot of ArchiCAD videos over the years. The best ones, IMO, are the ones put out by Eric Bobrow. He has a "quick start" course, I believe, for a reasonable cost, as well as a bunch of free tutorial videos. These can be accessed from www.bobrow.com. I have no financial connection with him; I just think he is able to explain things from a novice user's viewpoint better than anyone else.

[Anonymous]

I agree - this holds true in 2020, especially under the Covid lockdown - The most impenetrable "help" I have ever come across and the amount of time trying to do simple things as a novice user id costing huge sums of money in lost productivity. Myself and other new users are all struggling and even contemplating quitting!

[Anonymous]

Can confirm. As someone who's giving Revit and Archicad a test drive, I can tell you that Archicad is not as user friendly, as it's often talked about. And I'm talking about basic functionality that should be discoverable without googling them.

Want to dimension something? Click one, click two... Now what? Right click? No. Enter? No. Esc? NO! Double click on empty space!

You want a wall to be 200cm away from another wall? It's simple, just click on the wall, then Ctrl+D, then click on the very edge of the wall, then drag it over to the other wall, than carefully take your hand of the mouse because if you move it accidentally everything falls apart, than just type D X 200+. Simple! I couldn't believe when I read this, it's like those old AutoCAD versions, with blue screen and no GUI, where you typed in everything.

[runxel]

I think it depends very much on your expectation and mindset.
See, "The only intuitive interface is the nipple". And this holds true for software made for specialists.

Every software you have ever used must have been learned. Regarding to "that other software": I still think Archicad is much more user oriented and has a much higher discoverability.

The double-click at the end of dimensioning? Sure, that's weird! But every software has it's quirks. And take my word: Archicad has less of those than you think right now.

By the way: The "moving things"-thing is not as crude as you think.
Lock the direction with shift, and press "R", now you don't have to worry about your mouse.
And another often overlooked quick tip: You can take measurements while doing this (use the keyboard shortcut to activate) and then give the measured distance back into the tracker with enter.

[Anonymous]

runxel wrote:
But every software has it's quirks.

Definitely, I'm not saying one is better than the other. I'm just saying that Archicad is not easy peasy, smooth sailing all the way. Because that's often how it's portrayed online when someone asks for a comparison. Nicer UI and clearer parameters help, but it sure could learn a couple of things from that "other software". Other way around also.
If I could combine them into one program, that would be perfect

[Nader Belal]

@paulnewsome

First, don't dispare ... ArchiCAD needs a different mindset to those of other CAD or BIM tools, which makes it more powerful than others.

Second, there are hundreds of Youtube Channels that post thousands of video tutorials beside those of Graphisoft.

Third, you could also go with LinkedIn Learning, such as https://www.linkedin.com/learning/archicad-23-essential-training?trk=learning-topics_trending-course...

and that is the only site I say, it worth your money for the offer they make (in general not specific).

Fourth, if your collage offer Grasshopper classes, go for it, ArchiCAD and Grasshopper work nicely together.

Fifth, search for special ArchiCAD forums, many users would have faced the same problems as you are facing and usually are quicker and more responsive, I advise you to go with https://www.facebook.com/groups/archicad.es, it's in spanish, but that is one of quality and almost no spam

[Richard Morrison]

Prvoime wrote:
Want to dimension something? Click one, click two... Now what? Right click? No. Enter? No. Esc? NO! Double click on empty space!

You want a wall to be 200cm away from another wall? It's simple, just click on the wall, then Ctrl+D, then click on the very edge of the wall, then drag it over to the other wall, than carefully take your hand of the mouse because if you move it accidentally everything falls apart, than just type D X 200+. Simple! I couldn't believe when I read this, it's like those old AutoCAD versions, with blue screen and no GUI, where you typed in everything.

I wish that the shortcuts were taught more explicitly up front, because until you learn those, Archicad seems ponderously slow. For example, I like "Delete" as the final click to finish dimensions. I have the mouse wheel set to left-click as Delete. So, a dimension is click-click-left mouse wheel.

Moving the User Origin can be very fast (with the Tracker for relative input), especially if you have keyboard shortcuts worked out. (I have thumb buttons on my mouse for Alt and Ctrl so most keyboard shortcuts are a single keyboard letter.) Right-click on a wall or dimension or text (or....) plus S will put you in that mode. Typing "G" in the middle of command will switch the geometry mode on-the-fly. REALLY learning snap guides and guide lines makes things much easier. There are so many of these shortcuts that once you get these "in your bones", things can go very fast. All of these and more are unfortunately hidden until too late in the game when beginning users are frustrated.

[Hmooslechner]

Here is how i teach my Austrian students in german step by step:

At school in Salzburg - i show them - step by step - the things to do in quite a lot repeatings once again and again - first very fast, when they have to look only to get the taste of it, then very slow, so they can work on their own, again faster and faster and then i really run from one to the other to correct things individually.

At the same day at home, i do the lesson for video and put this online on Youtube - (switching more and more to vimeo - because i increasingly dont trust youtube anymore so much.. They are deleting videos when your opinion is not conform to the mainstream)

Then i put my Vids in the german forum in the Tutorial section - by the way - where is such a topic here in this forum?

MAKE IT!

(Like this in our german forum)

my examples: https://forum.graphisoft.de/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=26600

maybe somebody should do that similar in english...