Module 2: Points to Ponder

What are the primary goals of creating a building model? Who are the key stakeholders?

• What do they need?
• What do they care about most?

How much detail should you include in your building model? How do you decide?

• As you develop your initial design?
• As you continue to iterate and develop on your design?
• What are the key stages?
• And how much detail should you include at each stage?

How much detail should you include about the composition (layers, materials, thicknesses) of your wall, floor, and roof assemblies at different stages of your design process?

• Conceptual design: not much detail—this is just meant to be a sketch and adding too many details will likely hinder the design process
• Preliminary design: basic materiality is important, but the exact thicknesses and layers aren’t necessary at this stage
• Design development: energy and cost calculations should give more information at this time about what assemblies work best for the project and should be closer to the final design
• Construction documentation: exact, meticulous details are necessary at this stage to ensure proper construction

Many door and window manufacturers provide Revit families for doors and windows that you can specify for your building design.

• What is the advantage to manufacturers for providing these families? (it's not free to create and provide them...): If a customer is choosing between two products and the decision comes down to whether there is a Revit family for that product (which makes modeling much more convenient), it is in the interest of the manufacturer to provide these families, even if they are expensive and time consuming to produce.
• What is the benefit to you as the designer of using these manufacturer-provided families? Is there an advantage to using them versus the families provided in the Revit library? For many projects that require complex energy analyses, the families in the Revit library are not specific enough; each element must be modeled. Manufacturer-defined families save the renderer a lot of time, especially if one is designing a high-performance building with lots of complicated details.

What are the advantages of getting the Revit component families (for furniture, equipment, and fittings) directly from the manufacturer versus from an online sharing website like RevitCity.com?

The quality of the families is likely to be much higher when you get them from the manufacturer than from a sharing website. In addition, the manufacturer is more likely to provide families that have their specific products in the proper sizes and materials.