From AutoCAD to ArchiCAD – Step 10: Training and Support.

Hello there and welcome to another episode, the exciting episode, the conclusion.

This is where all the wisdom is going to come together.

We are here at Arcit with Willard and Alex.

Alex with me.

Willard is him.

Say hello, Willard.

Hello.

Yep.

And Will got new headphones.

I didn't ask him about that.

You do sound pretty good.

No, these are the same ones I've been using.

Oh.

Maybe I used another pair at one point, but yeah, these are.

These are my go tos.

I don't know, you sound pretty, like, pretty rich today.

So I thought the microphone was a little different, but either way, we are.

It's kind of celebrating.

Today we're doing the number 10 step for converting from AutoCAD to, you know, Archicad or Graphisoft.

Going from 2D, 3D, going to BIM.

Moving your organization to a whole new dimension of success and opportunity.

Okay.

This is a pretty significant undertaking we just talked about, Willard and I, before the show, of all the steps that are sort of required to make sure that this is successful.

But it's not like rocket science.

Like, yeah, it is changing the, essentially the operating system of your business.

But if you don't, you'll slowly, slowly, the progress will eat away at you and other companies will begin to take over.

And then you're going to be scrambling, trying to do it, you know, last minute.

And that's not a position to be in.

You want to set yourself up for success.

So I think this is a great way for you to kind of think through how this may look like for your firm.

If you listen to our podcast, we do have 10 of them, though, so it's a bit of doing.

But hey, if you got a little bit of a commute, you can at least kind of map it out in your mind.

What are the 10 steps required to go from where you are today to a new, beautiful, bright future, Right, Willard?

Yes, sir.

And, you know, if you can, you know, get a little bit, you know, as you get into those shows, you'll find a lot of wisdom, but you also find some, like, cosmic elevations that Willard does, and he does them very sneakily.

You would not know until you kind of write come right against it.

And if you don't laugh, you're like, okay, you're not listening.

It's always every show I think we had last 10 shows.

Right.

It was some kind of a very, very.

Yeah.

Cosmic reference or something of that nature.

Very meaningful.

Yeah.

World domination reference.

Time and space.

See if you can weave one in today here.

But we are doing training and support, so that is, that is the last step.

Step number 10.

And Willard, can you kind of lead us into this?

This seems pretty self explanatory, but give us some gotchas, give us some steps on how to plan out.

Once you've already done your migration training and support, what role do they play?

How do they play out?

Yeah, so, you know, we've gone through a lot of different kind of discussions about how to kind of ease your way into coming from AutoCAD or a different platform into Archicad.

And theoretically at this point you are producing information that is being shared, you know, throughout your kind of your support network or, you know, through teams or through your AHJs or authorities having jurisdiction.

And so what, and I think, you know, this is more of a kind of a macro kind of perspective is that all of us need to continue kind of training, you know, learning and increasing our capabilities, you know, regardless of where we are at within our career, career.

And then we also need to be able to understand that there is support for the activities that we're trying to enhance.

And so archicad is, you know, a very well documented and supported kind of application and it has a very robust and deep community that is out there that typically can provide you with solutions to, you know, most of your problems.

So that's kind of a high level kind of description of what we're about to jump into.

Okay, well, let's, let's land this plane.

Right.

So, you know, there are four steps you outlined to have a robust and functional training and support program.

Are you separating training and support?

And when you, when you say support in this context of us already producing information, being at this level of migration and functioning in the new system.

Talk to me about support a little bit.

Yeah, so support, I think, is something that we can look at from a couple different perspectives.

We can look at it from something that we are going out to seek, which could be somebody who comes into an organization and provides, you know, guidance, provides the tools and solutions to, you know, your most complex or troubling issues, or even provides the ability to guide you in any of these steps.

So I think that is, I think that's something that sometimes gets overlooked in this process, is that, you know, you might have, you know, a really stellar team, you might have, you know, an amazing backlog of projects and then the transition might have been super easy for you.

It could be the other case as well.

But for either case, you're still.

I think it's good to reach out and talk to somebody.

I almost look at it as having like an attorney who's on like a retainer where, you know, you just want to ask them a couple simple questions and you just want to get some guidance.

Or it could be as deep as writing a contract contract or helping with a template.

Or it could be like finding a solution to creating some more complex geometry and then fabricating it using, you know, a CNC or a laser cutter or some other type of machine.

And you want to get to that level.

But everything that you've looked at online or somewhere else is not necessarily available.

And then it's time to reach out to people who have a deeper kind of set of skills and experiences that can enrich your practice.

So are you talking about something like fractional BIM manager, which is sort of kind of what the package looks like here at ARC it that's what we're offered to our clients.

Is this.

How would you call, how would you call that support level?

Is this.

It's sort of like you have a little bit of a guru out there that you can just call in and ask a question that's kind of, that's really nice to have.

Like, I feel like in, in my businesses, like there's, I have these sage folks that I, that I'm very lucky to surround myself with that.

If I have accounting question, if I have a tax question, if I have a legal question, if I have a technical question based on whatever it is I'm doing, like, I have people that I can tap.

And is that similar?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think there's a tipping point, especially in going from like a small to medium sized practice, from a medium sized practice to a large practice practice, where even like a small practice.

So I'd say like five people out of those five people.

I think sometimes it's a little bit too much to ask for one person to be the guru within that group.

And that can be a role that distracts from their ability or their trajectory.

Because I don't, I don't think it's necessarily diminishing.

I think it's ultimately enhancing to have, you know, a deep, rich knowledge of the applications that you're leveraging.

But it can be a lot if, you know, on, you know, in a eight week period you're spending, you know, I don't know, five days out of those eight weeks, you know, dedicated to solving problems or doing things that might be outside of the trajectory of designing a building or, you know, engaging clients or doing site meetings.

Meetings and things like that.

So, so yeah, I think that there is There is a vacancy in the kind of the BIM market for fractional support where you're not necessarily paying for a full time BIM manager or VDC manager.

You're, you're getting somebody who can just show up and just be that sage for you and say, yeah, I can spend like three hours with you and go over some of the issues that you're dealing with and support.

And I think I found that to be more, more of a successful implementation for smaller firms because you both have the focus and attention of the group for a shorter, shorter period of time.

So that allows people to focus on the problems and kind of develop a kind of a question that they can in a specific time frame versus like this meandering relationship that could be a little bit too close and the proximity allows for a little bit too much, I would say, scope creep in terms of like somebody engaging with a guru or a sage that distracts that person from something else that they're doing.

So, and it's, you know, this kind of fractional support is not necessarily widely seen within the industry.

Industry, especially within archicad.

So but there is, you know, there is like graphisoft's technical support, but it's not somebody who's going to show up to your door or jump online with you and walk through these issues with you.

More specifically.

Gotcha.

Yeah, techno support usually solves, you know, technical problems.

You know, this, you know, cursor is not moving this wall.

You know, there's something wrong with software.

It gets hung up here on this when I, when I add this element or something like that.

But yeah, as far as, like, hey, how can I make this template most efficient?

You know, we've had trouble with it and, or, you know, we're going to do a lot here for this project and we want to build this template out to where it conforms to all of our design principle specs and all that.

Yeah.

And so, you know, shameless plug, you know, ARC it, you know, you listen to this podcast, that's who we are, that's what we do.

Well, we do it for design and architecture engineering companies.

But moving folks to the next phase in their development in their software is also one of our core businesses and we can help with this.

So Willard, training wise, outside of that support, either technical support through archicad directly or through a partner like ARC it, is there some kind of a training?

Like what?

Talk, talk, talk to us.

And how do you structure that training process once you, you know, considering that you want.

We, we are where we Are in.

In the conversion process?

Are there specific.

In other words, is there a specific training plan that you have to have in place?

What is the amount of time you would suggest, you know, people would be architects be investing in continuous training, having already started using the software.

Like, what are your recommendations?

Yeah, so I think that there's, yes, definitely, multiple tiers of training and kind of engagement, which we talked about in earlier kind of episodes.

But I think there's kind of an onboarding training, you know, a skills assessment where it says you came from this application, so we're going to sit down with you for three hours and four hours or something of that nature, and then we're going to onboard you into kind of getting familiar with the application.

And then I think that there's, you know, the potential to do kind of a yearly training where it's like new application or new version of an application.

So let's go through all the new features of that.

And then I would think that there's probably intermittent, you know, every three months, months or every potentially, you know, a lunch and learn on a monthly basis where it's saying this is, you know, a new technique or this is a way to solve, you know, something that we in a group have been doing.

It could also be, you know, potentially dovetailing that with template development.

So, and I think template development gets a little bit, like, even the term is a little bit nebulous or maybe not as descriptive, because I think template development is also kind of a continual training opportunity where you're not only looking at how things or how layers or layer combinations or views are being created or are created or experimenting with potentially new ways to, you know, create layers or name layers or things like that.

So I think that even in the generation of a template file, that can be an opportunity to learn how to be more efficient.

And then I think that that's also a good way to show the rest of the team, like, I've been working on, you know, this solution.

And the reason why I'm doing that is because, you know, this archaic way that we were doing in the past is, you know, much easier in this other way.

And then I think, you know, one other aspect is diving into both, you know, kind of online training opportunities, tutorials or things like that, where you can get a glimpse of something and how that might be leveraged and then potentially taking it to the next level and having a personal coaching session with somebody who has, you know, a deep knowledge of techniques or efficiencies.

And then so I think that there's you know, a few different ways to kind of continue the training because I think that idea of continually training also, you know, it's important for all aspects of the profession or your personal life is just continually trying to improve or at least be more efficient.

You know, so there's a lot of ways that we can leverage, you know, our applications and then further hone that tool or that skill set over time.

Gotcha.

I like the lunch learns.

That's a, that's a really good way to cross pollinate the best efficiencies within the org.

That's great.

Really good plan.

And so I think this is, I think this is a good, good way for us to let folks know that look, if you got thus far in our description or I guess in our journey here through the 10 steps of migrating your design software, I think you're very serious about being successful at it.

And if you are, if you need help, would love to get your phone call or your inquiry through getarchit.com we're here to help and hopefully this was useful for you and you found at least couple of things takeaways that will help your life and your business to be more successful.

Willard, I really appreciate all this time research, knowledge and sharing.

I mean yeah, at times this is, this is, we got technical but this is technical.

This is, you know, this is not a trivial piece of software.

You know, we're not drawing things just on a scrap piece of paper.

It's not back in a napkin stuff.

This is serious design software and requires fairly serious and planned approach.

And so we thank you for your time and your attention.

And again if you need help go to getarchit.com and I think Willard, next one we're going to start, we're going to start talking about some other things related to graphisoft.

For example, I want to cover stuff like I hear objections why people don't want to switch to archicad or even revit or maybe revit over archicad and saying hey, you know, revit.

A lot of more people using that than archicad and we get all kinds of interesting objections and excuses.

I want to do the excuse Buster episode.

Yeah, I think that'd be really interesting to do.

And like what does wire do when they do that?

That fill in where you start typing something and it auto fills the thing.

It'd be interesting to do like that too where it's like archicad is, you know, blank.

Yeah.

All right, well so yeah, we get to play games.

Next few episodes and educate you as well at the same time.

So, anyway, thank you all very much for your time and attention.

We wish you absolute success and phenomenal riches.

A lot of smiles and many, many, many, many, many, many beautiful buildings in the future of you and your company.

Yeah.

Anything to add?

No.

I mean, I think that if you got this far, you have definitely, hopefully gleaned a little bit of, you know, some of the things that you could be doing or are doing.

And I think you are in good hands with ARC IT in terms of having both a partner that's going to help you deploy and manage applications, as well as potentially helping you use those applications, you know, specifically archicad, in a more efficient and effective way to build some amazing structures throughout the world and potentially off world.

There he goes.

Cosmic again.

I was trying to figure out how I was going to get that in there, but.

But, yeah, I mean, it's been fun, and I look forward to diving into some more tangential discussions in the.

Yeah, let's have more fun.

All right, go to getarchit.

Com.

Check us out if you're not already there, and then we'll see you next time.

Thank you very much for watching, listening, and paying attention and staying with us here.

Thanks.