Book Image

A BIM Professional's Guide to Learning Archicad

By : Stefan Boeykens, Ruben Van de Walle
Book Image

A BIM Professional's Guide to Learning Archicad

By: Stefan Boeykens, Ruben Van de Walle

Overview of this book

A BIM Professional’s Guide to Learning Archicad is a comprehensive introduction to all that Archicad has to offer for creating 3D models, 2D document extracts, and related outputs. This book is not a click-by-click series of recipes, but rather focuses on helping you understand why and how Archicad works by providing realistic examples and expert tips. The book gradually introduces you to Archicad tools using ample examples. It then helps you master its complexity through clear modules, allowing you to start your first project quickly, gain useful skills in subsequent projects, and keep using the book as a source for insights into the software. You’ll start with the basic modeling of construction elements and then move on to adding roofs, stairs, and objects to the project. Next, you’ll dive into basic drafting and 2D views for creating 2D output, and grasp how to use attributes and more advanced modeling tools for designing curtain walls and sites. The concluding chapters will show you how to extract and visualize your data and automate the publishing of your extracts and 2D documents into a variety of output formats. By the end of this book, you’ll have gained a solid understanding of Archicad, how to implement it efficiently in your architectural projects, and how BIM can improve your overall design workflow.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Part 1: Getting Started with Archicad – Project Setup and Essential Modeling Tools for Your First Residential Project
9
Part 2: Becoming an Archicad Professional – Learn About Archicad Tools and Settings to Create and Publish Any Type of Project in Full Detail

Custom shapes with the Morph tool

Despite the wide variety of tools and the plethora of parametric library objects, you may need an object with a particular shape that is not available out of the box. Designers and manufacturers make countless designs in all sizes and shapes.

While you could try to look online for that perfect library object or use other 3D software to create the geometry, Archicad provides a very flexible modeling command: the Morph tool. This is a single tool with a very powerful pet palette providing a flexible set of geometric operations: extruding, filleting, adding edges, moving vertices, and so on. If you have some experience with SketchUp, you’ll feel at home.

And the biggest advantage? It’s right there, inside Archicad, where it behaves as a proper, native BIM object with all the power that Archicad brings to it. You can measure them, include them in 2D and 3D views, or extract information.

Let’s start with the basics.

Basic...