About us

I have been making ArchiCAD GDL objects since about 1992. At that time I had stepped out of Architecture and was selling CAD solutions, mainly back into Architecture, but to most industries. I had started with AutoCAD, but in looking around for a high-end alternative I found ArchiCAD and fell in love with it almost immediately. ArchiCAD was almost unheard of in the UK at that time, my company was the third largest AutoCAD dealership on these islands and we quickly became a top selling ArchiCAD reseller.

I was then approached to work for the then UK distributer of ArchiCAD, it was a massive decision to step out of my own company, but the challenge to put ArchiCAD on the map here in the UK was one I relished and believed I could do.

Things didn't go well, the distributor was Apple only and the CAD market, at that time, was almost entirely Unix or PC, I realised I was wasting my time and resigned.

Graphisoft came calling and asked what was need here and I put a suggestion forward, this was accepted and a relationship was established with Art Systems of Nottingham (former AutoCAD distributors) and myself to take on PC based distribution of Graphisoft products. It was incredibly fruitful.

One of the challenges to overcome was the ArchiCAD library which needed some fairly serious work to align it with UK products, methods and standards and so I set about building GDL objects and have been doing it ever since.

In 2002 I went back to Architecture, starting my own little practice (the smallest in the UK) and set a plan to commit 2 hours of my time to library pert development on every project, within 3 years I had an incredibly effective library, that completely changed the performance of ArchiCAD. I now have over 800 objects, some ok, some good, some I think are awesome. I have repeatedly been asked to distribute them, but I was reluctant to become distracted from our core business. Finally I succumbed.

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Gary Lawes

Jagged Edge Design Ltd