First impressions
I was in my second year of university in 2015, and I freshly joined a student organization, called ‘Építész Szakkollégium’. This organization collected people from different years of architectural studies, its goal was to grow as future professionals. Some of the fellow members, who were a few years ahead of me in studies, they had to work on a larger urbanist project together and they decided to use Teamwork for this purpose. This was the first time I ever heard about Archicad and its Teamwork functionality. I was amazed by the things they said – they all work from their own computer at the same time on the same model! They used a laptop in the dormitory to host BIM Server 17 at that time, and it was visible for all of us how Teamwork helped them working more efficiently.
A year later, I got into the ‘Advanced Archicad’ course, which was managed by Graphisoft. During this course, we learnt how to use Teamwork and we were introduced to BIMcloud. Our semester project was to rebuild an existing building from Archdaily in Archicad, using Teamwork. I liked to see how our project is developing, hitting Send & Receive added more and more details to our project. In the same semester, I had a similar urbanist project like my fellow members at Építész Szakkolégium. I was 100% sure I don’t want to send PLN via email to work on this project, but I want my own BIM Server.
Credits to the original authors of the project: RYB House / Beczak / Beczak / Architekci
Configure my own BIMcloud – Mission successfully failed
I was keen on setting up my own BIM Server. I knew we will be the only team using it, and I was sure we will save a lot of time for us. With such a motivation, I sat down, searched on Google what I need to do and I tried to follow the steps of a Help Center article, which was provided by Graphisoft. As a naïve architectural student, who never had to manage her network in detail before, I thought I can easily set up a working BIM Server in an hour or two, which is going to be available for my fellow member. I was so wrong!
While I was working on fixing my own setup, I contacted my teachers whether if I can use the same BIMcloud for my other university project what we used for Advanced Archicad. They gave access to me and my friend, and as a regular student, I soon forgot about my own BIM Server. (Fun fact: a few years later I found a screenshot about the incident… turned out I tried to share my ‘localhost’ address with my friend. She had no chance to ever connect. 🙂 )
Switching to the dark side – from student to trainee
In the end of that semester, I joined Graphisoft HQ as a trainee in the BIMcloud Implementation Team. It was not clear to me at that time what I will do, but I felt motivated to learn more about Archicad and get experience with Teamwork. I started working on Teamwork and BIMcloud related support questions and explored the existing database to be able to understand our developer colleagues. At that time, I had my own ‘dictionary’ too and I worried a lot how I can be as knowledgeable as my colleagues.
I got my first detailed BIMcloud introduction from a fellow team member. He introduced me that BIMcloud is more than the web UI I saw before.
I was confused and didn’t understand half of what he said, but at the same time I met our developer team as well, and all I knew is that I want to be a BIMcloud expert.
BIMcloud Software as a Service – being one of the first users
2016 was the time when BIMcloud Software as a Service was born. It started as an identical twin of the on-premises version, but one of our colleagues was experiencing how it can be scaled on certain cloud platforms. We had some pilot users, mainly Hungarian offices and my university. Now as a Graphisoft trainee, it was a no brainer for me to host my group project on my university’s dedicated BIMcloud, which became BIMcloud Software as a Service during the summer months. We monitored a lot of different use cases at the time, and after the first 6 months, I became the number 1 user to Send & Receive. I sent my changes more frequently than any architect from large Hungarian offices. 🙂
The one who could never attend a BIMcloud training
While I did support, I learnt a lot from the team I worked with, and even more from the BIMcloud developers. I spent hours with them understanding issues and how the software works. I learnt how to read logs and I installed hundreds of BIMclouds during the years.
One thing I could never do is attending the BIMcloud Expert training we hosted for Graphisoft employees and partners. Well, at least I couldn’t do it as a student – in 2020 I became one of the trainers, and I worked on extending the training for end users too. I was also advocated to teach fellow colleagues and did many internal trainings too.
From zero to hero
As you can see, I started my journey as a complete beginner, with almost zero knowledge about networking and BIMcloud, and after 6 years many of the knowledgebase articles are originated from me. I met great people during this journey, and I could be the witness of how much the software improved in the last 6 years and how BIMcloud Software as a Service became global. I helped many of you to be able to enjoy the benefits of this wonderful software and I hope you could also get the right help from me too!
