Why is it important to accurately model the land features of your project site with a toposurface?
The design of the home should maximize the scenic views of the actual project site and be careful not to bulldozer over natural highlights.
- What aspects of a building design are most affected by the terrain features?
The orientation of the building and its windows, as well as the building levels and their horizontal relationship to each other, are most affected by the terrain features
When designing a project...
- Should the building adapt to the terrain?
- Or, should you adapt the terrain to the building?
What considerations affect a project team's decision-making when deciding the floor-to-floor height to use in a multi-story building?
- From a real estate developer's perspective?
- From a designer's perspective?
- From an engineer's perspective?
- From a builder's perspective?
- From an owner's perspective?
What are the advantages of stacking the levels of a multi-story building vertically?
- Can you share an interesting example of a building that didn't vertically?
- What were the advantages or reasons for non-vertical stacking?
Why do stairs follow specific proportions with a set relationship between the tread length and riser height?
Accessibility considerations for all demographics determine the maximum riser height, restricting it to 8” in residences and 7” in commercial spaces in the U.S. The tread length to riser height determines the run length of the stair — which cannot be too long, or else most homes couldn’t fit stairs!
- How can building modeling help prevent the mistakes that often occur when designing and installing stairs?
BIM can enforce requirements and define stairs parametrically in terms of the surrounding elements so design changes to part of the design will be cascaded down to the stairs, even if that change is for a specific level and the stairs span multiple levels.
Describe a case when it would be worthwhile to create a new custom component in Revit… How do you decide when customize versus using readily available components?
When a customer brings the dimensions of a custom door from a supplier they like who doesn’t offer Revit components, modeling that custom component is important to ensure that the entire design can be used as a construction document later on to precisely capture the intent of the owner and the designer. Small edge cases can incur big headaches down the line if measurements are off even by just a few inches.
Customization can also be helpful if it helps the design move faster, for example, an extrusion as a rough sketch of a counter.