Why is it important to accurately model the land features of your project site with a toposurface?
The elevations as well as most of the other design aspects of your building are greatly affected by the toposurface. If your toposurface isn’t accurate, nothing else that interacts with the toposurface will be either. These other design aspects include roads, sidewalks, gardens/plants. sections, etc.
When designing a project...
I believe that a building should adapt to the terrain, lest it is less effort to conform the terrain to the building. I think that because each location is distinct in its own way, we should work to recognize that individuality and distinction by integrating it into the building. This makes the buildings less disruptive to the environment, while also allowing them to tell the story of its context or even enhance it.
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?
I think it is worthwhile to create a custom component when you are using designs and shapes that are atypical and do not meet the specifications that the usual standardized components require. An example of this would be if you created a building model on a hexagonal grid. The angles that are created by said grid would make it very difficult to find components that seamlessly fit into the rooms and corners of the building. Rather than struggle to fit rectangular pieces into a hexagonal space you could customize components that fit exactly as you want them to.