ArchiCAD Summer School: 2006: Feedback Page 3: Friday

Page 1 / Page 2 / Page 3 / Page 4

Friday 8th Sept 2006

Graphisoft UK Morning

(Garreth Evans on the Virtual Building and Graphisoft's position, Jenny Hamm on the Education initiative, Simon Gilbert on some recent addons.)

Enjoyed Garreth's presentation. I think it is important to know what is going on at HQ and in the UK. Graphisoft morning is a vital start to ACUE business. Jenny Hamm might have been a bit shorter - felt myself drifting off. Simons stuff was excellent - lots to think about on the addons front. Sort of think they should be in AC not something we should be having to buy. If it's a useful tool Graphisoft should put it in the programme. We pay enough for the software. Simon could have had extra time. Richard Payne

Great presentation - I especially liked Garreth's view on the industry from
slightly different point of view. Pavol Elias

The Graphisoft team are reassuringly professional....keep up the good work. Ben Wallbank

It was nice to see that the education area has been developed and new students will all over the country will have been taught in AC. The usual great talk by Simon. Paul Domville

From a student point of view Jenny was most relevant to listen to, and the rest did not really bear much relevance to me, though I understand that to the majority it probably did, so no complaints here. Matthew Wingrove

I was more interested in the 'educational' and 'addons' side of this presentation especially the 'encina objective' addon. Having said that it's good to know
Graphisoft aren't going to go bankrupt any time soon and i can see the obvious advantages of a integrated approach from a practice point of view - even though I won't be using it soon. Phil Oldfield

As a student I found this interesting but not entirely useful. Jenny Hamm's talk served as an excellent introduction to how easy ArchiCAD is to learn. Ben Hopkins

This was not so interesting in my point of view, being from Portugal! But it was nice to see the work of Graphisoft UK in particular presenting the nice add-ons that we can have. Luis Abreu

Very interesting event and ideas presented by people working for Graphisoft. Very interesting add-on "Objective" looking forward to put my hands on it! Przemyslaw Gajowiak

Good to hear GS promoting itself more actively commercially & in education. GS still needs to get more exposure in the technical press & events around the country. Mike Willey

Simon and Jenny were good. Simon made a good choice in showing the OBJECTiVE add-ons. We need to find another way to present GSUK sales growth without
the typical marketroid PowerPoint stuff. James Murray

An interesting season on graphisofts development and direction. Their involvement and commitment to the education sector is impressive. Phil Green

Not so exciting this year as AC10 already launched, but encouraging to hear that GS are doing well - must buy some shares ?? Peter Bennison

Virtual Construction looks very promising. Frank Hollinger

Yes interesting, how Graphisoft is approaching the builders to get involved etc , education very good too. Well I will spread the word if I get a chance. Ross Cahill-O'Brien

We need the education thing in place so we can kill the "industry standard" dogma. More needs to be said in the press about the move to BIM, particularly the US GSA initiative. Chris Phillips

Being from the Apple mentality of the underdog, could see similarities with Graphisoft. Good to see commitment to the long term. Fascinating ideas on the education intiative. Already got my two boys (13&11) doing the tutorials. Martin Kelly

Plenary: ArchiCAD 10 Migration: Graphisoft Hungary

(Gyuri Nyitrai on Layout Book, Andreas Fabian on Modelling, Greg Kmethy on Teamwork.)

I have to admit Graphisoft team was not as impressive as it was in previous years. A bit too technical and pointing to all of the potential problems you can encounter - overall it ended up being a bit depressing :-) It must have been useful to other attendees though... Pavol Elias
[Eds note - this is exactly what they were asked to do - a sober piece of advice, not a sales talk that you might get on a free roadshow. I should have asked them to start off with "Five killer reasons to upgrade" before going on to talk about pitfalls. My fault....]

A thorough and honest presentation which gives practices like mine pause for thought before migrating large projects to 10. It seems we will inevitably have to invest time in adjusting old layout books once they are turned into PLN. files. Ben Wallbank

There is certainly a language barrier with the guys from Graphisoft, hard to understand. All seemed easy to migrate using Powerpoint presentation, but how does it actually perform on a real project. Paul Domville

Fortunately I don't have any half finished models in 9 I need to get into 10 (and anyway I couldn't cos I run an educational version), so this presentation wasn't much use to me. Having said that, if I was in practice I can see the obvious advantages of knowing the updates in teamwork, layout book etc and people I spoke to in practice found it very useful. Phil Oldfield

I know that they could not talk about what they are improving in Archicad, but I was hoping to get some clues... Luis Abreu
[Eds Note: this will be on everybody's thoughts in Sept 2007]

I hope we did not scare people too much by listing all possible migration issues. In real life, it is not so bad. And you only need to do it once. Such dramatic workflow changes do not usually happen between versions. Greg Kmethy, Graphisoft

Useful advice on cooperative design work in a big, complex environment such as a large architecture practice. Sharon Sh-Cigari

Good tips, but it went over the heads of many at ACU for 1st time and many limited experience users present. Could the GS technical bits be just covered in the workshops for those that need them? Mike Willey

As I and several others mentioned in person, these guys need some pizzazz. Especially with no new product announcement. This is an *innovative* *design* software, but you'd never know from how they talk about it. The contrast to Thurs evening is stark. Come on guys, you have cool jobs! Enjoy yourselves! James Murray

Some good tips on the migration process and potential problems that may arise. Phil Green

A textbook presentation, alarming at first in flagging up conflicts, but reassuring in the end that actually migration is entirely feasible. Peter Bennison

Could not easily grasp or understand many of the items they were trying to put over. Very hard to hear or understand some of the speakers. Martin Kelly

Came in on the end of this - Simon talking about add-ons; this was interesting. None of the Hungarians that I saw had adequate presentation skills. GS need to put people up who have some ability in this - a bit of showmanship is important. Thinking back to previous years, the best GS sessions give us a sneak peak at what is coming. Maybe this was lacking simply because of the timing of the development cycle. Nigel Walter [Eds Note: see my eds note above.... I briefed them to be too factual. Sorry.]

A reasonable introduction for the people who have missed Andreas on Wednesday and Thursday morning. Daniel Dusoswa

Workshops, for both Friday and Saturday

Case study : Michel Rojkind

I wanted to hear a little bit more about his working methods. It was really good... Mette Mikkelsen

Nice to see a bit more of Michel's work that wasn't shown in the first presentation. Again brilliantly presented in flash, but nice that this time it was more informal, allowing for questions etc. Phil Oldfield

Michel Rojkind, would like to have seen a bit more of his use of ArchiCad but nevertheless a workshop not to be missed. Daniel Dusoswa

Case study : Tom Cederqvist

State of the art ArchiCAD Aladar Kish

Maxwell with Pavol

Maxwell. Great stuff! Very realistic visualizations, you can not even tell if these are real photos or renderings! Nice piece of software but rendering time is sooo slow.. Przemyslaw Gajowiak

Very good presentation, but more like a sales pitch than a workshop. Ray McNally

Good final rendering results, but program needs speeding up. Mike Willey

Office Organisation with Matthew

Excellent stuff. One day I will really get a hold of setting up office standards and then rule with a rod of iron (until we need another emergency layer). Still think a few completely worked out template examples could be good for those floundering in the face of the infinite number of choices that the software offers. Would also like to see some ideas on drawing numbering systems. Richard Payne

Listening to Matthew's annual lecture has become since 2003 unavoidable for me. If i had to come to Nottingham for one event only this is the one. Til Breton

A good session with a couple of great tips for setting up and maintaining template files. Phil Green

Highly informative and really useful, just what I needed. Peter Bennison

Yes I really like what Matthew has to say, perhaps one of the best lectures for me amazing and i loved his little temple. Ross Cahill-O'Brien

This could have done with more focus and an agenda - in responding to a couple of questions we wandered off down a bit of a dead end. Good however to ask a few more questions - Matthew is a great resource. Nigel Walter

ArchiCAD 10 Easy Introduction (Meenakshi Mandhar)

One of the most informative work shops I attended, Meenakshi demonstrated with clarity how to use ArchiCAD10 from the most basic steps onwards, and gently introduced the extra functionality available in the new version. Sharon Sh-Cigari

Very good introduction, but a little rushed. Some of the delegates hogged the session with very specific questions that they overly pursued. This meant that Meenakshi did not have time to finish her presentation and we all missed the final items. Martin Kelly

Graphisoft "Meet the team"

We got a chance to show how migrating really works on a real project. One example was an ArchiCAD 9 project that strictly followed the guidelines as to how to work in a layout Book. (just layouting in Plotmaker, no touch-up on drawings, live links, drawing titles used, etc...). In this case, migrating is just an open/save/merge/done process. Greg Kmethy, Graphisoft

Almost had a 1 - 1 with the AC guys although they were not good at coming forward with ideas or suggestions. I had to ask what AC10 did, what were the new features, etc. Paul Domville

Richard Swann presented his GDL-based SAP calculation solution. Really impressive work. Greg Kmethy, Graphisoft

Had a very demystifying discussion with Andras Fabian mostly about migration issues but some other things like Ungvar crept in too - great! Thanks Andras. Aladar Kish

Artlantis Studio with Ildiko

Good covering of the program that I think managed to help both someone new to it and those using it sufficiently, was a bit worried all the architects seem more concerned about putting animated people in movies than actually designing though! Matthew Wingrove

To be honest I didn't consciously learn a lot from this, and I don't think anyone that was using it already came away with any new tricks. However, I still think it is a useful workshop if only so that you sit in front of the interface for a while, I have used the demo and the interface is pretty counter-intuitive, so watching someone use it helps. Most of this workshop was repeated in the plenary on Saturday as was Piranesi, so I'm not sure whether it should be included twice. Ben Hopkins

A few tricks I did not know about Artlantis and a good opportunity to ask questions and give some ideas for next version of Artlantis :) Przemyslaw Gajowiak

This is really a program that i have to try out! I just seems so simple and intuitive and I think that it would be a good programme to use in the early stage... Mette Mikkelsen

This workshop demonstrated methods for using Artlantis as tool to be able to demonstrate your project to the clients, who might not be architects. The demonstrations shown were very encouraging for the use of Artlantis for visualisation of big, complex projects. Sharon Sh-Cigari

Ildiko - Good to see ArtLantis demoed again. This was one of my main hopes for this year, to be able to get under the skin of R/Studio in order to implement it within the office. I got most of what I needed through lots of questions. ArtLantis would benefit from someone taking a different approach to Ildiko's, which because it is a sales session tends towards listing features; it would be good to have someone doing the nitty gritty of how I produce this output from this AC model. Nigel Walter
[Eds note, this shows the effect of NOT voting before the summer school - Miguel Krippahl was all geared up to come with an Artlantis users advanced instructional workshop, but not enough people voted for it, so he decided not to fly (from Portugal).]

Cinema 4D for beginners with Andreas Lettner

Very engagingly presented, also touched on maxonform which i found useful. Obviously its difficult to teach a programme in an hour and a half, but whats good is that we were shown what the programme is capable of (i.e. more organic modelling). It was especially important to show that objects can be swapped between archicad and cinema 4d, so you can start with a simple object in archicad, take it into cinema 4d and distort it and take it back into archicad so easily. A great tool. Phil Oldfield

Piranesi with David Rimmington

Very impresive! I really enjoyed this workshop very much. Having done superb renderings within 20 mins? This is really possible! I would love to try out this software. Przemyslaw Gajowiak

Impressed by what this can do! Why do we need Photoshop?? David gave a good lecture to show what this can do. Mette Mikkelsen

Teamwork and Modules with Adrian Harms

Excellent and always informative - its a must to attend at least one session with Adrian. Clarified several doubtful procedures and confirmed we are going the right way with several others. Richard Payne

A good overview on teamwork and a valuable season on modules and hot linking files into others. for repetitive elements within a build or sites with several builds. Phil Green

ArchiCAD 10: 10 Next Steps with Alan McDonnell

Best by far of the workshops, very nice guy who knows how to teach (knowing the subject matter isnt everything but he both knows AC and knows how to talk about it). also got sent an email from him since then with a pdf overview of what he covered. Hire that man! despite being an intermediate level it was all clear to me as a beginner, built well on the tuesday workshop in Paton House with Adrian. Matthew Wingrove

The name was confusing, as there were nine steps, and it was not a specifically Archicad 10 talk. Neither of which bothered me, but I think a number of people attended because they thought it would be a talk on what was new. Although I already knew most of the points covered, there were a number that I didn't, which will probably make my life a lot easier. Alan was an excellent speaker, and seemed to have planned the talk well. Ben Hopkins

Informative talk about the fine tuning ArchiCAD to tailor your project to your most detailed specifications. Sharon Sh-Cigari

A 10 out of 10 for Alan, the best workshop that I attended over the whole 2 days. Alan was well prepared with a list of subjects to cover, which he did in the time. It was light hearted and included humour and witty jokes. Many many things learnt in this workshop which I have already put into practice. Well done Alan. Paul Domville

Nice clear workshop instruction, a refresher course for me, having been inspired by DNC and his Cookbook in previous years. Going through the next steps was exactly what I needed to prod me into action to actually use all the possibilities offered by GDL. I hadn't been on a workshop with Alan before, great teacher. Thanks for the course notes ! Peter Bennison

It was a no brainer to go to this presentation, all my comments from the previous session applied equally to this workshop. The best presenter at the workshops I attended. Martin Kelly

GDL for beginners by Herbert

Useful step by step example of making a chair, and being asked if we could work out the next step rather than being told it got us thinking enough to pick it up. That said this made the demo slow, so despite being very comfortable writing anything on a blocky object, nothing else was touched on, though I at least now could go away and teach myself more, which is all that can be asked for in 2 hours. Matthew Wingrove

This was a great workshop, although the subject isn't exactly edge of the seat stuff, for anyone that was interested it was a good introduction and I came away feeling like I had learnt something which could be useful. Herbert went methodically through the design of a chair while constantly involving us in the coding. Ben Hopkins

Nice clear workshop instruction, a refresher course for me, having been inspired by DNC and his Cookbook in previous years. Going through the basics was exactly what I needed to prod me into action to actually use all the possibilities offered by GDL. Peter Bennison

Herbert was a good presenter and took his time to go through the basics of GDL. I learnt the basics and have now started to produce some of my own simple objects. Certainly de-mystified GDL for me. Needed a bigger screen or projection. Martin Kelly

Object making without GDL with Herbert Peter

Object making with herbert. Very good, true and at a basic level. A fundamental thing about how to add geometry and save it a GDL object for re use . cool, but not my favourite lecture. I preferred talking to him about 3D printing which I never heard of before and that is amazing. Ross Cahill-O'Brien

GDL, 10 Next Steps with Alan McDonnell

I thought it was very good. and informative yes great for me and where i am at in Archicad. Ross Cahill-O'Brien

Interesting... maybe there is hope for me;-) Aladar Kish

Great session, really excellent presenter. Well structured presentation. Generously sent presentation material to us all by email. Drinks a mean pint of Guinness. Martin Kelly

ArchiCAD 3D & Navisworks

Best part of this presentation was showing the new 'profile manager' which is a great update much improved from the last version. Unfortunately ran out of time to show much of Navisworks. Phil Oldfield

Howard Gill showed some Navisworks, like that program a lot. Great to see a bit more of it and Howard showed it well. Daniel Dusoswa

Data Exchange with Herbert Peter

A good season reviewing the various settings and there effect on dwg and dwf exports and imports. A good look also at IFC. This looks like a very interesting format for the exchange of 3D information between CAD packages. Phil Green

Case study with Ben Wallbank

It was very interesting to see ArchiCad actually been used to the final detail. It gave a very good picture of what it can do. It was an interesting lecture and Ben is a very good speaker. Mette Mikkelsen

Office Standards with Andreas Lettner

A different slant from Matthew but not in opposition. Inspired by the approach to keep it simple. Its all about discipline really. Got the little nugget of information that I always get sometime during ACUE. This was the Align tool in the 3D stuff. Some were aghast that I didn't know about it, but looking round I could see that just as many did not know about it. Richard Payne

Some good stuff here, and nice to see some of the projects, but I wanted more pace. Also the style was a little condescending. Nigel Walter

2D Layout Book with Gemma

We all thought that Gemma was the secretary at Bite, but we were wrong. She was very good, she knows her stuff, I think I understand where Plotmaker has gone and where layout book is. Well done Gemm. Paul Domville

Maxonform with Simon

A turning point for me, made me aware that it really is possible to do a crazy rhino style building in ArchiCAD. Again learned as best as is possible in the time and can now at least play with it and teach myself more. Finished half an hour early, so went to look at Piranesi and got a one on one demo, very helpful, seems easy to use, though maybe the watercolour styles seem a bit cheesy and lilliput lane-esque! Matthew Wingrove

Although a good introduction into the archicad/ maxonform interface there was probably not enough content for a full workshop. Another problem was that the computers being used were not particularly fast and so there was a lot of waiting when importing high polygon counts. Ben Hopkins

Interactive Scheduler with Adrian Harms

Another excellent session with Adrian, a bit spoiled by a couple of database geeks who spent too much time whinging about the database engine behind it all. Richard Payne

Another great example of the advantages of the BIM. A great session. I had very little background. Phil Green

Great power but let down by poor database. Graphisoft should really do more with this potentially fantastic tool. On the wish list! Daniel Dusoswa

3D Printing with Herbert

Thanks Herbert for this well documented and very clear overview of the new technologies of 3d printing. Til Breton

A concept that was alien to me before this workshop. The concept of 3D printing was very well explained and work illustrated was of a high quality. The speaker was very informative and easy to follow. Sharon Sh-Cigari

New to me :-) but worth recommending to our clients. Frank Hollinger

Extremely informative presentation of his hands on experience with this process, with a physical example. Aladar Kish

Case Study with David Emery

Great to see how DE does the nuts and bolts on residential schemes. Small enough to be a Q&A session and trading tips. Would have enjoyed more. Nigel Walter

Page 1 / Page 2 / Page 3 / Page 4

Email: ArchiCAD University Secretariat for further information