Confessions of a BIM Manager: The ArchiCAD template Odyssey

If you ever want to test your patience, resilience, and belief in the goodness of humanity, try building an Archicad Template from scratch. Not tweaking one. Not updating one. Building one - a pure, untouched, mythical “Base Template” that will (hopefully) solve all modelling issues from now until the end of time.

At 24/Three, creating our Archicad Template started with optimism. Genuine optimism. The kind where you think, “How hard can it be? It’s just favourites, attributes, pens, composites, view maps, layouts, schedules, title blocks, classifications…” - and then realise that every button hides another rabbit hole.

Chaos is inevitable: duplicated layers, mysterious pen sets, and endless debates over wall thicknesses. But somewhere amidst the confusion, structure emerges.

This isn’t just about surviving model madness. The template is, in many ways, the unsung hero of 24/Three’s workflows. It quietly keeps everyone on the same page, so that no one accidentally creates a rogue wall in layer “Banana Peel” or sends out a drawing called “final_final_v3_revised_2.pdf” to the client. It saves hours of frantic setup because view maps, layouts, and schedules are already waiting patiently in the background, letting the team actually focus on designing rather than wrestling with software menus.

More importantly, it helps make us the professionals we aspire to be. Clients and collaborators see coordinated, coherent models and drawings, and (hopefully) think, “Ah yes, these people know what they’re doing.” And beneath all the chaos and occasional eye-rolling, the template quietly enforces the rules of UK Level 2 BIM, ensures coordinated, friendly workflows, and keeps our detail and information standards intact, so we can sleep at night knowing our work is not just beautiful, but also compliant, coordinated, and impressively employable.

Ironically, being a collaborative tool, it’s the collaborative spirit of the 24/Three team that keeps the template alive and improving. Those who test the templates, tweak the favourites, catch the little mistakes, and quietly refine the system day after day are the real engine behind its ongoing evolution.

Yes, someone will inevitably change a favourite by mistake. Yes, the chaos may return intermittently. But like all great 24/Three endeavours, it’s a living, breathing thing, manifested and developed by everything that makes this company great – the people. It is equal parts order and chaos. And that’s what makes it ours.

Author: Mark Branch