Archicad Start Edition: BIM for small practices and businesses

Joana Alsasua devotes this one-hour session to a specific question: what a small practice, or a self-employed professional, can do when they want to work in BIM without needing all the capabilities of a large implementation. The tool examined on screen is Archicad Start Edition, Graphisoft's reduced version of Archicad, in its 2021 edition. After a brief introduction to Graphisoft, the Nemetschek group and Open BIM, almost the whole hour takes place inside the programme, on a housing project. The demonstration works through a single file. Floor plans, sections and 3D documents are derived from the three-dimensional model without redrawing anything: what separates a joinery drawing from a structural one is the combination of layers, pens and graphic parameters. Elements are then built live — a partition drawn in plan that appears in the 3D, a wall that is split and curved, doors and windows from the object library, configurable furniture — and it shows how construction junctions are resolved according to the materials assigned. The second half focuses on information and on project output: loading data into each element and reusing it in labels; building joinery and quantity schedules that remain linked to the model, so that selecting a row takes you to the element in the 3D or in plan; exporting those schedules to a spreadsheet; dimensioning automatically with dimensions that respond to changes; and generating construction details, either linked or unlinked. It also shows saving to PDF, DWG and IFC and a navigable BIMx hypermodel in which drawings and model are connected for showing to a client. The session is explicit about the limits of this version: it does not include Teamwork-style collaborative working, it has no internal rendering engine — in the recording an external rendering programme is used — it does not incorporate the renovation tool, wall height is not linked to the storey above, and files from the full version do not open in Start Edition, although the reverse route does work. A round of questions from attendees closes the session: licence type and updates, using the same installation on Windows and on Mac, how to organise a renovation project with layers and custom properties, where to consult the comparison between versions, and how far DWG export is reliable and configurable.