Documentation Concepts

The core concept of BIM is that a single model file can store the entire project documentation, since the drawings are automatically generated from the BIM model. In ARCHICAD, the single file concept is not restricted to the solo ARCHICAD files (PLN); it is also applicable to Teamwork projects. The single file concept is well proven in small firms with small to medium sized projects.

Naturally, larger firms with larger projects have to divide projects into several files for many practical reasons. Those reasons include performance limitations resulting from the single file method, and workflow bottlenecks resulting from multiple users working on one file.

ARCHICAD supports a variety of differently scaled projects, providing a transparent method for handling multiple sessions and multiple views within a complete collection of files. Basically there are three typical workflows in ARCHICAD, which can be combined depending on the project at hand: