ArchiCAD Winter School: Report on ACWS 22-29 Jan 2006

Sunday 22nd Jan

ACWS2006 started well with everybody arriving safely. There were something like 40 of us coming from Stansted, and by bus from Linz airport. Alarming conditions.... dense fog, swirling snow - hope it won't be like this all week! - seemed like a long walk up to the Edelweiss - lucky there was a skiddoo for the luggage! A lot of the car and train travellers had arrived earlier. We had dinner, followed by a short introduction to the Winter School.

Monday 23rd Jan

Ski report

Glorious Skiing weather - sunshine all day and enough snow to provide excellent skiing. With 2.50m of underlying snow, the pistes had been increased and widened and the surface was in perfect condition. Everybody was out on their skis or boards, and the beginners were taken care of by the excellent local Ski school.

Power Hour - tutors meeting

Evening Plenary

Prof. Martin Treberspurger spoke about the design for the Shiestlhaus in the Hochschwab region, a zero-emission eco building designed to be at high altitude as a mountain refuge for long distance walkers - providing accommodation and food (closed during winter). It's construction was designed to be transportable in helicopter portable sections. The building uses a combination of systems, including super insulation, water catching, thermal and electric solar panels, heat exchanging, rape oil burning and woodburning (using the remains of the previous Schiestlhaus) etc.

Herbert Peter did a short talk on some examples of contemporary urban Austrian Architecture, in various categories (commercial, cultural, residential, education, etc). More info and images can be obtained from nextroom.at. a website celebrating contemporary Austrian architecture and design.

David NC took the school through the contents of the Winter School CD, including the site details and photos for the idea of two projects which could be looked at during the week: a prefabricated Annexe for the Edelweiss, and a Feuerkogel centre to be on the plateau formed by demolishing the timber part of the BergHotel (retaining the masonry stories). This was followed by some group discussions.

Tuesday 24th Jan Ski report Glorious Skiing weather - sunshine all day and enough snow to provide excellent skiing. Some of the better skiers were already finding the runs a bit too easy and Alex Neubacher (Hotel owner, ex Ski instructor) suggested we can make it more interesting if we set ourselves targets for improving skills. This brought into being the Feuerkogel Personal Challenge which a number of members tried on Tuesday. It was a success, and became a talking point for the rest of the week and a test of skiing that was tried by all the intermediate and experts. The idea is to do every piste and every lift in the resort (excepting the baby lift of course) at a comfortable but fast speed, and to chart the results during the week - noting how daylight and piste conditions, personal fitness, improving skill etc affect the times. Later in the week, the challenge was extended to include two more - a Beginners Challenge for those who had taken ski school, and an Altitude Challenge - from the Highest to the Lowest point, without using lifts. For practical and safety reasons, it's only realistic to run the challenge during the weekdays, as during weekends, the lifts are too crowded with weekend skiers and children. See the Feuerkogel Challenge!

Power Hour - Andreas in chalet, Simon showing Maxonform, Gemma taking users through the basics. Many other small groups operating including Lubo and Howard.

Evening Plenary

David N-Cole - introduced the Feuerkogel personal challenge - a way to make the skiing more interesting for intermediate to advanced skiers - emphasising that its not a race, its a time trial for people to run at their own comfortable skill level - but working to improve their time on each occasion.

Andreas Lettner - Showed slides of an Austrian costume parade at his village of Igls, near Innsbruck, in which the inhabitants are 'driving away the Winter', in a costume parade that includes wearing giant cowbells and head pieces with carved wooden faces. Similar events are held in traditional parts of Austria, and Ebensee is noted for its parade of giant head pieces. Igls is a ski resort only about 4 km south of Innsbruck which includes the Women's Downhill Olympic course of 1976.

Adrian Harms - demonstrated the art of using Hotlink Modules using DNC's outline plan of an Annexe to the Edelweiss. This can be incredibly timesaving if you have many repeated elements to build, and is a way that groups can share the workload. Changes are easily made (and updated in the plan) .

Howard Gill - demonstrated one of the less known parts of ArchiCAD, Construction Timelining, which is of interest for showing animations of the process of construction. This will be better done in Constructor (including recipes etc), but it exists in ArchiCAD, although you have to select the 'Expert' work environment for it to appear in your Calculate menu. It is easy to configure in ArchiCAD, or a predefined project can be imported from MS Project. Select objects and elements in the 2D window and set the date on which they will be constructed or demolished. Run an animation with rebuild each frame, either from a static camera or using a path of cameras. Navisworks can also be configured to demonstrate the construction process.

Photos for Tuesday

Lubomir Kulisev - reminded members of some 3D modelling processes, including objectmaking using Profiler, object making using the normal elements of ArchiCAD.

Wednesday 25th Jan

Ski report

Glorious Skiing weather - Yet again! sunshine all day and pistes were perfect to provide excellent skiing, and the uncrowded lifts enabling members to try out the Feuerkogel Challenge in perfect conditions. At this stage, we should thank Walter, the driver of the PistenBully machine who works late into the night to ensure that pistes that get roughened due to skiers, or crusty due to wind are beautifully groomed and ready for use each morning.

Lunch for ACWS team members with Mayor of Ebensee and head of the Cablecar. The Mayor kindly donated some prizes to be handed out later, and provided a fund for everyone to have a free drink on our last night.

Power Hour - Andreas in chalet, Marie Sofie Larsen +David Kjoller ° 'Pregnant Houses' in GDL.

Evening Plenary

Night Skiing and Igloo Pub - Being the half way point, everybody was in the mood for a rest and the Ski School had organised Night Skiing (baby slope under floodlights) and a pub in the Igloo on the babyslope, gayly lit up with neon stars and filled with music. Highlight of the evening was the sequence of attempts to achieve formation skiing (both conga style or line abreast) one of which was captured on video. This is surprisingly difficult unless you have someone firmly in command (like Andreas) who can tell the whole line to swing to the left or the right, together.

Kellerbar - Great fun had by all..... we suspect some people stayed up all night.... Herbert Peter performed a marathon effort of guitar playing, working his way through a file of music sheets and joined by others singing late into the night. And have you ever managed to drive a nail into a block of wood with a blade? Well you can try it here... it's surprisingly enjoyable as an alpine activity, second only to yodelling contests or skiing black runs in leather shorts.

Many thanks to the dedicated and indefatigable barmaid Nicole who never hurries anybody, but who stays up to serve until everybody is ready to quit! (and is then ready to help with serving breakfast....)

Thursday 26th Jan

Ski report

Good Skiing weather - cloudy bright (white light) all day clearing to sunshine in the late afternoon, windy.

Power Hour - Andreas in chalet, and other small workshops.

Graphisoft Evening Plenary

Simon Gilbert - Virtual Construction - Simon talked about the 4 Ms of construction - Manpower, Machiner, Money and Materials, and how Constructor works - modelling in a similar way to ArchiCAD, but applying 'recipes' to construction elements to build in the 5th dimension of the elements - the resources and methods by which they are built (e.g. a concrete column requires formwork and rebar). Linked to Estimator, this can dramatically reduce the time and risk of errors for estimating. Some of the delegates questioned whether Architects would want to take on the responsibility aspect, but the model is an entity that can be taken further by Contractors who would be able fill in the 5D information.

Simon Gilbert -Maxonform - Simon also showed us Maxonform working with ArchiCAD, and it looks more impressive every time we see it. The ability to modify existing GDL objects is one of the most profoundly useful capabilities. GSUK have very good terms for making this available in the education field.

Akos Pfemeter, Attila Agfalvi, Peter Mohacsi and Laszlo Kocsis - took turns to show us different aspects and capabilities of Nautilus - Due to NDA restrictions, I can't write much about this here, but rest assured, there was considerable delight from the conference, and occasionally spontaneous applause for what we were shown.

Friday 27th Jan

Ski report

Glorious Skiing weather - sunshine all day and enough snow to provide excellent skiing. More and more people were trying the Feuerkogel Challenge - the fastest time yet was 28 minutes by Herbert G and Siggi F (schussing almost everything in perfect light) and many more people were getting times under 40 minutes.

Power Hour - Andreas in chalet, Simon with Tutorial on Maxonform, Lubomir with tutorial on VR techniques.

Evening Plenary

Damian O'Mahony - Houses in Australia - Damian has a successful practice in Australia and has a good presentation on some of his recent Houses, one of which was featured on TV. Damian showed houses from Kilcare, Mollymook, Hardy's Bay and Seaforth, some of which were on difficult sloping sites. Lubomir Kulisev has used one of Damian's houses as a case study for teaching ArchiCAD.

Simon Gilbert - showed Change Manager, a new GS product for use with teams who have to work with DWG documents received from consultants - M&E, Structural etc - and rapidly identify changes or differences. You can download a free demo that works for a limited use.

Herbert Peter - showed 3D Printing from ZCorp; his university have recently acquired a gypsum printing machine which can make models up to a size of approx 25cm cube. The gypsum is activated by liquid from a bubblejet print head. Although we have long been asking GS to provide STL export format, Herbert showed how the ZCorp software can effortlessly import a VRML file from ArchiCAD. If you scale the models appropriately you can 'stack' several into the same cube and print them in the same batch. Recent printers can also inject coloured liquids to make solid coloured models. Herbert has used them to generate models some of the Viennese Synagogue facades he built as a research project in 2004.

Herbert Peter - showed 3D Skiing - downloadable from orf.at (although I have no idea where it is on that site! - luckily he had it on a memory stick too). This is a remarkable 3D simulation of downhill ski racing - at different levels of difficult on some of the major winter sports venues in Austria. Herbert successfully achieved a full race, but the audience demanded blood and bones! And so poor DNC was press ganged into showing the Winter School how powerfully realistic it is when disaster strikes, as it did many times during his descent down the same course!

Ildiko Szabo - from Abvent showed us Artlantis R with Radiosity - this has a completely new interface since Artlantis 4.5, more polygons, drag'n'drop backgrounds, heliodon and more. It can use settings from previous models ('postcards'), and save out models as objects which can be brought into other models, e.g. buildings can be saved, then brought back into an urban planning model. There are some super trees available. The align camera feature is very powerful for fitting part of a building into a photograph.

Siggi Frass - GDL joinery design - works for a joinery company and has developed (with remarkable rapidity) a comprehensive range of GDL Kitchen Furniture, with many options for drawers, doors etc, and capable of listing the cutting list for each unit.

Herbert Graier - Yacht interiors - Herbert is (our fastest skier) also works for a joinery company in Graz, but his speciality is high class Yacht interiors, and he showed us a slideshow of the construction of a 68m super yacht - in which only the highest class finishes are acceptable.

Marie Sofie Larsen +David Kjoller - Pregnant House - showed work from a project called 'Pregnant Houses' - houses made in GDL with options for growth or changing configurations according to family requirements. The model can be viewed on the Web with a browser using the GDL browser plugin.

Lubomir Kulisev - showed some innovations in VR photography - using a special conical mirror and 5-8mpixel digital camera - the 0-360 Unwrapper software makes it possible to create spherical VR photos. He also showed examples of Mixed VR, where ArchiCAD images are montaged into real photos, and then converted into VR cylindrical views. He also showed EasyPano, software for organising VR tours for use on the Web.

Sunday 29th Jan

Ski report - Perfect conditions again, but we cant use them - because it's going home time. Many people coming up from the valley for the day, what a shame to have to leave Feuerkogel. Took bus to Linz Airport.

Last update: December 12, 2006