Graphisoft QuickNews 3.10 / October 2003

Dear Reader,

October's Graphisoft QuickNews is reaching you a few days earlier than the last few months. We're releasing earlier to coincide with the exciting launch of the latest update of ArchiCAD: ArchiCAD 8.1. This tweaked and refined version of the world's most mature AEC CAD solution is now shipping. Read more below.

David Nicholson-Cole is a high profile ArchiCAD user, as those of you familiar with ArchiCAD University will know. David has been the 'guinea pig' for a new feature we're including this month, where he outlines his deep and personal commitment to ArchiCAD, GDL and ArchiCAD University. Read the summary below and then link to the full profile. David has a lot to say that is worth reading!

Take a look at the events section too. There's an opportunity to go to a state-of-the-art demo of all that's best and up-to-date in architectural design CAD at the Digital Architect Tour.

Responding to early results from our ongoing reader survey, we've included links to dozens of user hints and tips. More changes are afoot, so have your say and influence the future look and content of QuickNews by completing our reader survey .

Welcome to:

Graphisoft ® is delighted to announce the release of ArchiCAD ® 8.1, the latest ArchiCAD milestone.

ArchiCAD 8.1 features a whole host of tweaks and enhancements, making the world's most versatile architectural design solution even better. It will be worth much more than a pure maintenance upgrade, thanks to the refinements made to several key areas of the product. Having concentrated our efforts on several areas, the fruits of our labors are:

• Documentation - enhanced documentation management
• Harmonization - uprated external compatibility
• Simplification - a streamlined user interface
• Utilization - an extended Virtual Building?

For a fuller description of the enhancements included in ArchiCAD 8.1, we have prepared two online demonstrations of the refinements; one showing metric measurements and the other imperial. Click to view the introductory page: 'Welcome to ArchiCAD 8.1' and from this page you can link to the demos, following a short registration process.

For details of where to obtain ArchiCAD 8.1, contact your local reseller.

On the road with... Dominic Gallello, CEO, Graphisoft

It is with great pleasure that I start this column. It is my intention to communicate to our users trends that I see as important in the industry and how they may affect our users and partners. I also hope to use this column as a means to communicate where Graphisoft is going and how we hope to have a positive impact on your business. I decided to call this column "on the road with" and not, "from the desk of" as I believe the most important thing that we do is visit with our users, our potential users and companies that may never be our customers, but work very closely in the value chain with our customers. Hopefully, I will have an opportunity to visit your company at some point.

As an introduction, and a re-introduction to many of you, Graphisoft stands for "great buildings!" and we deliver process acceleration. Our mission is to take billions of dollars per year out of the construction process. We will do this by providing platforms based upon open standards in order for all the constituents in the process to be able to move data efficiently without recreation. The current process, which could be as bad as 2D to 3D to 2D to 3D to 2D is madness. Constant recreation of the same data is costly, slow and almost always introduces mistakes. Our goal is to make this dramatically easier.

I believe that Graphisoft and our partner products going forward are going to mean good business for our customers. Whether you are:

• An architect who wants to win new business by being able to show prospects the energy impacts of different design alternatives and run projects faster and more efficiently or
• A construction company that wants to ensure that the designs you are provided are right before you build and that estimates are accurate and the sequencing of your construction phases are clearly understood by the builders or
• A facility manager that needs to manage a facility with only a budget of 2% vacancy

Our team at Graphisoft are very excited about the future of the industry and our role in it. We hope that our vision and our singular focus around "great buildings!" will serve you well as you participate in building the world going forward.

Bavarian Parliament Building Reconstruction Designed with ArchiCAD

After a stringent selection process and extensive consultations on the reconstruction of its Plenum Room, the Bavarian Parliament has opted for the design competition-winning entry of Volker Staab.

When reconstructing the Plenum Room, the interior design of which dates from the post-war era, three main tasks had to be carried out: to change the Plenum Room's seating plan (the number of representatives having been reduced from 204 to 166); to provide a contemporary interior design, incorporating modern seating and state-of-the-art facilities for representatives and finally, to optimize the room's lighting and thus brighten up the once gloomy atmosphere of the Plenum Room. For a fuller description of this innovative reconstruction, click here.

The Digital Architect Tour, Europe, Oct/Nov 2003

Go and see how you can fully exploit the potential offered by the integration of digital media into your design process. Cutting edge applications will be demonstrated in one seamless workflow, teaching you how to offer the ultimate presentation experience. You will discover how easy it is to exploit some of the coolest tools to beat the competition, and you'll be able to go back to your studio with the freshest ideas on how to win your next bid.

David Nicholson-Cole - the Profile!

You've read the books, now find out about the phenomenon that is David Nicholson-Cole! David is the author of the famous GDL Cookbook, and more recently of the small book on Object-Making that appeared with the release of ArchiCAD 7. The GDL Cookbook has done as much as anything to move GDL from an arcane Hungarian secret to a popular 3D language dabbled in by thousands, and used day-to-day professionally by hundreds of users.

David has been teaching at Nottingham University in England for many years and regularly travels to parts of the world teaching GDL. We interviewed him about his work with ArchiCAD. In the first of what we hope will be a regular series, we've invited DNC to outline what role ArchiCAD, Graphisoft, GDL and ArchiCAD University play in his life. David talks openly about how he combines the world of academia and GDL scripting. In particular, he goes into some depth about ArchiCAD University and its future, but he also expands on his personal life and history.

David is clearly a very committed user of ArchiCAD and he definitely has a lot of valuable things to say on the subject. Read the whole profile here.

Rendering of the Month

Our congratulations go to Francois Chatelain of Power 3D Pty Limited, Mosman, NSW, Australia who is our September winner.

Francois' various images were modeled in ArchiCAD 7 and ZoomGDL. Contact Francois on: power3d@netspace.net.au

Winners, who receive a Graphisoft t-shirt, are awarded monthly based on user entries submitted to the gallery. Would you like to see your work displayed in our online gallery? We welcome submissions from all ArchiCAD users. See contest details.

Upcoming Events

Country	Date	Event	Location
Austria	November 6-7	Bausoftwaremesse	Congress Innsbruck Saal Dogana, Stand 12
Finland	November 7-9	ASTA	Tampere
Germany	November 6-8	Baufach	Leipzig
Ireland	November 6-8	Plan Expo	Dublin
Germany	November 19-21	ACS	Messegelände Frankfurt Halle 4, Stand C51

There are many other ArchiCAD 8-related events taking place worldwide. For a comprehensive listing of events, go to our Graphisoft Community Events pages.

TechTip of the Month Winner

Congratulations to our August winner, Darren Noble, for his tip on the customizing of the InfoBox in ArchiCAD. This particular tip is: a reminder of a feature that can make using ArchiCAD even easier for different projects.

Learn great tips from your fellow ArchiCAD users in the new User Tech Tips section of the Graphisoft website. Got a great tip to share? Submit it to techtip@graphisoft.hu for the chance to win a free T-shirt!

Using Textures with ArchiCAD

A J. T. Burk Tutorial on caddigest.com

Cad veteran J. T. Burk has written an excellent tutorial for ArchiCAD users on Cad Digest on how to use textures within the solution. The tutorial is clearly laid out, with plenty of screen shots to make things as straightforward as possible. Read the whole tutorial here.

ArkiKlub ArchiCAD Tutorials

If it's tutorials you want, ArkiKlub is the place to go! There are literally dozens of topics covered on their tutorial site, ranging from commentaries on general CAD subjects, to specific ArchiCAD queries. A short registration process gives access to everything on the ArkiKlub site.

Graphisoft 2004 Calendar

We are currently compiling renderings for use in our 2004 Graphisoft calendar. We would really like to make the images as seasonal as possible, in particular autumn/fall and winter scenes. If you have any colorful, high quality renderings modeled in ArchiCAD that would fit into our calendar, we'd love to see them.

Your submissions should be made as soon as possible. Please use the following guidelines when submitting your renderings:

• Format: TIFF (or low-compression JPEG)
• Resolution: 300 DPI minimum
• Color: CMYK (or RGB)
• Final image size: 300mm x 300mm (approx. 12" x 12")

A Graphisoft t-shirt and a copy of the calendar await those who submit images included in the calendar. Send entries to gallery@graphisoft.hu or high-resolution files on CD-ROM to:

Attn: Andy Harvey (Rendering of the Month)
Graphisoft R&D Rt.
1399 Budapest 62, Pf. 660
Hungary

by 31 st October ? a tight deadline, so get rendering! Submissions are subject to Graphisoft's normal terms of use.

QuickNews Reader Survey

In the world of business, anyone standing still is soon left behind. The same applies to newsletters. Graphisoft is very keen to make this newsletter reflect its audience's wants and needs.

To this end, we have compiled a very short reader survey. Our goal is to make every QuickNews subscriber a reader of the newsletter. To do this, we must make QuickNews as reader-focused as possible. We urge you to spend just a few minutes of your precious time to complete our reader survey if you did not do so in last month's edition. Let us know what you think.

Proceed to Reader Survey!

Thanks for reading this month's QuickNews!

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