ArchiCAD Summer School: Report on the Event

Monday 5th September

The first long distance travellers appeared on Monday afternoon, all eating round at DNC's house - pig out on Pizza, Ice cream and beer - and discussion of some last minute thoughts on the programme and the documentation.

Tuesday 6th Sept

ArchiCAD Beginners: Adrian Harms and Meenakshi Mandhar of Bite.co.uk led a one day course for ArchiCAD beginners in the newly created CAD teaching lab in the School of the Built Environment.

Wednesday 7th Sept

Lightworks Rendering, and Photoshop

Dwight Atkinson has returned to ACUE after an absence of just over a year with a completely new presentation based on his recent book on Lightworks. He astounded all the audience with a perfectly honed display of detailed information on using Lightworks, covering every conceivable aspect of how Lightworks can be configured in ArchiCAD, finishing to the minute at breaktimes to allow us to take breath and coffee. He has explored every permutation of the materials shaders and how the lighting objects work. He finished up with a presentation on the Photodream idea, that it is not enough to do a good rendering with ArchiCAD/ Lightworks, but there is a lot more that can be done in the process using Photoshop to get that final touch. For a special training course, it was a great success to get an audience of over 30, some of whom had travelled from France, Portugal, California, Oregon, Greenland, Denmark, Kenya especially to hear Dwight.

Feedback Notes: Lightworks Presentation

The ArchiCAD Office

Andreas Lettner took his audience on a very thorough trip through more systematic ways of working and thinking with ArchiCAD - avoiding 'CAD chaos' as he calls it. He also reduced the pain of some of the more unpleasant tasks such as DWG import/export. Andreas gave us extremely useful information but presented it also in an absolutely understandable and entertaining way.

Feedback Notes: ArchiCAD Office

Thursday 8th Sept

During the morning, delegates already here had a leisurely morning, either taking a bus into town to explore the City Centre, or walked the park, or tried the University Pool/Fitness Centre. Quite a lot moved to the Studio building for some more "grooving away with laptops" with Andreas Lettner - in a sense a continuation of his 'ArchiCAD Office' course of Wednesday in the form of an open consultative surgery on ArchiCAD practice.

ArchiCAD Encounter

To start the conference, delegates are formed into small groups of approximately 15-20, and after introductions, the facilitator leads the discussion in directions which he/she detected in the introduction - e.g. object technology, interface, 2D-3D anomalies, support, education, wishlists etc. This also works as an ice breaker and friendships are formed. The facilitators report back early in the evening before the plenaries. Some people start off a bit hesitantly, "er, my name is, er... its..." but 20 minutes in, and warmed up, the conversation always turns lively.

Facilitators: Frank Hollinger, Til Breton, Ben Wallbank, Chris Phillips.
User Feedback on the ArchiCAD Encounter

Evening Plenary: Andreas Kohlhaas - What has ArchiCAD to do with Earth Google?

Andreas has been interested in city modelling for a long time, and showed his model of Berlin. Earth Google is an astonishing new technology that burst on the world in mid summer 2005,and extends to enabling you to plant 3D models onto satellite images mapped onto modelled terrain. Andreas has also developed ArchiCAD plug-ins to help this process.

Evening Plenary: Tom Cederqvist - ArchiCAD in the North

Tom Cederqvist gave a rip roaring performance through many of his built schemes and competition entries, with a stunning set of images and thoughts, displaying an inspiring committment to using every part of ArchiCAD, GDL and graphics for documentation and marketing. Everybody returned to the bar extremely happy! And for those who wanted more, he generously provided a 90 min workshop on Friday with a lot more information on the use of ArchiCAD in his practice.

User Feedback on Thursday

Friday 9th September

Graphisoft Morning: See user feedback

Graphisoft UK and HU provided a strong team, and the presentation started with a video from Dominic Gallello, urging everybody to have a good time at the tribal occasion of the ArchiCAD Summer School. Garreth Evans, head of GS-UK talked about Graphisofts position in the world, particularly in its partnerships to related technologies. David Jellings introduced the thinking behind Constructor. Simon Gilbert demonstrated Dynaproject. Akos Bezegh and Miklos Slovenji-Lux provided an entertaining presentation on three items:

• Sketchup 5: The smart link exporting to ArchiCAD providing real walls and floors etc, and enabling GDL objects to be placed in wall openings as part of the conversion.
• Maxonform: the Cinema 4D modelling engine working within ArchiCAD, providing the answer for all AC users who have wanted to form curvy shapes.
• Nautilus: a glimpse of future technologies, of which we can't write much here, you should have been at the event to see these!

The Graphisoft team put on a great show, the most upbeat for years - estimating from a user survey that a million buildings have been designed with ArchiCAD!

Half Plenary: The ArchiCAD Office: Andreas Lettner
Half Plenary: LIGHTWORKS, Rendering: Dwight Atkinson

These two half plenaries were designed to enable the speakers to present a somewhat condensed version of their one-day presentation, especially useful for those who had take the one-day courses to hear the 'other' speaker.

Workshops and Rolling Plenaries

See the Programme and Feedback notes.

Saturday 10th September

Half Plenary: Object making & Better 3D :  James Murray
Half Plenary: The Intelligent Building Model : Howard Gill

Workshops and Rolling Plenaries

See the Programme and Feedback notes.

Tips and Tricks Session, Sat afternoon: See user feedback

• David Nicholson-Cole on the Winter School, also the Sailing School and the Yahoo ArchiCAD University Group.
• Mike Hohmann on ZMapping - site models based on aerial 3D surveying, available for sale at reasonable prices.
• Fabrizio Diodati on ArchiMap, surveying tool derived from the earlier Housemap product, due to be available to the public in next 2 months.
• David Kjoller on Danish prefabricated bathrooms, with smart scratch files allowing 2D objects to read a master 3D object and generate drawings and schedules.
• Andreas Lettner on Timber Prefabricated houses in Austria - beautiful modern houses, using solid laminated walls.
• Daniel Dusoswa on UZR3D, smart Mac/PC software for deriving 3D polygon and texture objects from digital photos of real objects.
• Daniel Dusoswa on GDL Hotel in Feuerkogel, a project for an entire building, as a single parametric GDL object.
• Peter Agnew on linking Sketchup town models to Earth Google, saving them for your own EG, or uploading to community area.
• Matthew Lohden on 2D elevation/sectional view, a trick with wirelining objects.
• Richard Swann on UValue calculator, using the Label tool on Walls and Zones.
• Phillipe Bondier and Til Breton on Artlantis R, proving that you can do animation even if the documentation doesn't admit it!

Prize Draw: There was a draw at the end and Russell Jones from South Wales won a mini-Pod donated by Graphisoft. We didnt need to distribute smaller prizes as Graphisoft brought an abundance of GS-branded Rubik Cubes and Teeshirts which were handed out earlier, and most people got ACUE Pens. Saturday evening We all went into town for a 3-course meal at Antibo's Italian Restaurant. Later, many of us walked to the extraordinary Pitcher and Piano, a large church in High Pavement converted into a drinking hall that is like a cross between a Bosch painting and the most excessive fantasy of every architectural student. As a result of offers of help, and other persuasions, Nightingale Hall has been booked for the equivalent weekends for ArchiCAD Summer School 2006 and 2006. Night out in the Centre - Antibos Restaurant - See special photos page

Email: ArchiCAD University Secretariat for further information