TPL Accelerator Workshop

When it comes to building Archicad Templates, the hard truth is: 

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL!

For years with CONTRABIM 1.0 (2016-2024), we tried to find the perfect middle ground that balanced several aspects of what goes into a BIM template, including:

• Simplicity vs. Advanced Functionality
• Project Size (# Stories & Scale)
• Construction Types (Residential vs Commercial)
• Units (Imperial vs Metric)
• User Goals (Design vs Construction)

At the end of the day, we ultimately split our CONTRABIM 1.0 Template into 4 Types to handle these large variations:

• USA Residential (1/4" Scale)
• USA Commercial (1/8" Scale)
• INT Residential (1:50 Scale)
• INT Commercial (1:100 Scale)

But even with splitting our template, and multiplying the setup efforts x4, over the years we've learned the difficult, but important lesson, that it's not possible, or practical to come up with the silver bullet Archicad Template that can serve the wide range of users requirements.

Beyond the simple fact that 1 (or 4) sizes cannot possible fit all user needs, we've also learned an even more important lesson.

Archicad Users benefit dramatically when they setup and create their own Project Templates, specific to their requirements.

While providing users with a large, powerful, complex template that serves both Design and Construction sounds great, when it comes down to learning and adopting the template by end users, there becomes challenges.

• On-boarding a Large, Complex Template can become overwhelming, especially for new users
• Having a ton of different workflows and functionality, creates bloat that most users won't fully utilize
• A large template is more difficult to modify to user preferences.
• Re-customizing the template with each new update, becomes a burden.

That is why CONTRABIM 2.0 takes an entirely different approach.

CB2.0 Template Structure - Promoting Template Harmony and Self Determination

When developing CONTRABIM 2.0, we wanted to take all the hard learned lessons from 1.0, and make improvements that would dramatically enhance our end user's experience.

How we're approaching the template structure itself has drastically changed, by splitting our work into 3 main template file categories.

• Central Attribute File - Where core attributes are developed, backed up, and distributed from.
• Industry Content Files - Where deep work of creating model favorites, assemblies, details, reports can take place, while integrating Manufacturer specific content.
• Project Template Files - Developed by End Users, specific to their requirements.

In this new structure, end users will:

• Learn the template basics from the Central Attribute File.
• Craft their specific production workflow, in their own Project Template Files.
• Populate their projects with content from Industry Files.

It's a totally different approach to template delivery, and we've structured it in a way to better deliver useful content to more users, while ultimately making it easier for end users to benefit from.

TPL Accelerator - A New Training Workshop for Project Template Building

With CONTRABIM 2.0, we're excited to announce a brand new training program that will teach Archicad Users how to plan and setup their own Project Template Files.

This is a first for us, as we've always trained on how to use a template, but not specifically how to build one.

The program itself is broken up into two main working files.

1. An Excel Planning Workbook, which asks the questions and guides you along the journey to planning and documenting your Project Template.

2. A starting Archicad file, based on CB2.0 Attributes. (Use your own cleared out template file if you prefer).

From there, we have 5 Parts to this training program.

Part 1 is all about entering your user and company information, then defining your project type and template uses.

Part 2 Establishes the Key Naming Conventions, Branding Standards, Text Graphical Outputs, and Title Blocks. We also establish the Layout Book Folder structures, to work in accordance to your predetermined Layout ID scheme.

Part 3 Takes us from the Project Map, to Saved Views, to Drawings on Layouts. This is the heart of setting up your workflow.

Part 4 is a big one, and is all about setting up your Documentation.

Part 5 finishes off with Model Content, and reviewing the Legends and Placed Favorites included along the training program.

This course is over 70 videos, over 13 hours of training. Our mission when producing this course, was to produce short, fast, task oriented videos, from 5-10 minutes in length. If you take the course all the way through, anticipate spending 3-4 days to build out your template file.

See the full course curriculum here.

TPL ACCELERATOR COURSE PAGE