Setting up a Studio Template

[cassie]

HI all
We are transitioning to Archicad and are a small interior design studio and looking to set up a template?
Any ideas on how to get started?
Thanks in advance

[Erwin Edel]

If your reseller offers a template that they made (preferably adhering to national standards): that is probably a good starting point.

If you adjust the things you need changed, but stay close to their template, you should (most likely) be able to keep adjusting their template or merging your template with their new template on each update.

This is basically what we have done with our version (NL) and it works well for us.

[Laszlo Nagy]

There are also users offering free Templates for the benefit of other users. One is Shoegnome's Open template:

http://www.shoegnome.com/2021/03/16/shoegnome-open-template-v24-3-for-archicad-24/

Another one is Alexey Podolsky's own Template and Library parts:

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Collaboration-with-other/ArchiCAD-Template-and-Library-free-down...

Alexey also provided a PDF in which he describes a lot of how to use the Template and Library Parts.

Studying the above resources can give you a lot of ideas of how to develop your own office Template.

[Emre Senoglu]

There are lots of things to take in consideration when starting a template from scratch: materials, favorites, pen sets, graphical overrides, layers, layer combinations and view/publish layouts are the most important ones. You also need a good work environment (the way your menus & toolbars are set up, as well as shortcuts and other settings) before you start your template.

The best place to start is probably Shoegnome, run by Jared. Check out Jared's templates and work environments: Shoegnome

Archicad offers some sample projects, although I think they are a little outdated / too standart in some cases. Have a look at them anyhow: AC Sample Projects

Fellow forum user Podolsky recently shared his own template / pdf manual. Although being a little more advanced, it gives a great idea of the level of customization you can end up with: Forum Thread

Then, if you are interested in something even more complex, you could check out ContraBIM's products. These are however paid templates: Contrabim. If you are not willing to pay just yet, I would highly suggest checking out their youtube channel anyways, as John shares a lot of useful information about AC in general but also creating templates.

Creating a template can seem like an overwhelming task to get started with. And in some ways it is, seeing as there are so many elements you have to 'decide' without having a specific project. Just start small, with the stuff you know. Then use it on a project, and modify it. It's okay to set up %50 of it in the first try, try it on a few dummy projects, take it up to %80-90, and then fill out the remaining %10 over the years as you work on real projects. Don't worry about getting it perfect the first time, this is impossible as templates will evolve and change over time according to your needs. I've also found that creating an accompanying excel sheet for layers, shortcuts and some other parameters has helped me greatly in keeping things organised. This also has the benefit of being able to educate my colleagues in a faster and clearer way. Good luck!



*edit: oops looks like Laszlo beat me to it leaving my comment anyhow since it contains other information too.

[Eduardo Rolon]

Another item to take in consideration is that this process will take a while since you have to define/evolve your office production workflow. [list=]

This is the phase that answers the "We used to do things in this way and now we are going to do it like this". Based on how this evolves you will understand what you need to setup in your Template, what is important etc.

Along the way you should start defining the requirements for your template. The base question to answer is what items you need to repeat using. The easy items are Master Pages (i.e. Office Page Setup), Dimensions, DWG export, Pen Sets, Text Defaults, since they usually correlate with Autocad. The more difficult/complex items like Building Materials, Surfaces, Overrides, MVOs will take more time since they are "unique" to AC and depend on your new production workflow and your AC proficiency.
Usually as you start to implement AC workflows you will start to save time so even though the template design process can be a multiyear process you will get benefits along the way.

[ethanbodnar]

Hey Cassie,

I'm in the very early stages of setting up a template for my small landscape design studio.

This course by Archvista is the way to go, I signed up for three months, took tons of notes, and I'm slowly applying more each time I start a new project. I tried to decipher it from looking at other people's templates or watching free content, but after 6 months of doing that and not getting anywhere, this course was spot on.

https://www.learnvirtual.com/archicad-standards/

For me part of getting the template set up and Archicad in general is about removing lots of the options and tuning it into our process, since Archicad is so powerful and magical, there's a lots that overkill for our residential projects.

All the resources everyone shared are great as well 🙂