EN | Today I started learning about all of the millions of materials settings that are possible with Lightworks. When you change the settings for a material in Archicad, you can preview the changes in the internal engine or in Lightworks. One thing I did not realize prior to my tutorials is that if you change all the settings in Lightworks to what you want, they are not automatically update in in the internal engine preview – you must ‘match with internal settings’. This could be outdated information, as the tutorials reference Archicad 10 and I am using 12. However, I will need to check on it.
Rendering with Archicad and Artlantis | Part 2: Lightworks Materials
Rendering with ArchiCAD and Artlantis | Part 1: Lightworks Overview
Here at Emu Architects, we use Archicad as our BIM drafting software. While the Lightworks rendering engine in Archicad is excellent, we are hoping to use it in combination with Artlantis to speed up efficiency of rendering time. Since there are only two of us in the office, creating beautiful presentations in a minimal amount of time is very important. We have found that Artlantis has a much more simple interface and can render images in a much smaller amount of time. That being said, I need to spend some time exploring all of the possibilities of both softwares in order to understand how best to mix and match our uses of them.
Selecting a Platform and Software for Small Architecture Office
One of the biggest debates for a small start-up, and one that we experienced first hand, is the issue of how much of your capital to spend on computer stuff.
As we began making our wishlist of software, hardware, and other capital expenses, we realized that the decisions we were making about what to invest in now would probably be with us for the life of the company. What I mean is that it’s rare that a small practice makes a massive switch from PC’s to Macs, or from AutoCAD to Vectorworks, simply because of the financial implications of converting everything and basically starting a new learning curve.