What are the primary goals of creating a building model? Who are the key stakeholders?
Primary goals of creating a building model include communicating the design intent from pre-construction into the construction process, coordination of cross-discipline involved parties like architecture, utilities, structures, MEP, landscape, etc. The key stakeholders include but are not limited to architects, engineers, contractors, building representatives - to manage the design intent and appropriately maintain the intended lifecycle of the building.
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 is about 10-20%, with low level generic and basic layout and labels to assist with broad concepts and aesthetics. Preliminary design is about 30-40%, with a moderate amount of information for walls, floors and roofs. Design development is about 60-75% completion with many material, dimension and layer details provided to setup cross-discipline coordination. Construction documentation at 90-100%, consists of complete details of materials, exact measurements, connections, layers and thicknesses.
Many door and window manufacturers provide Revit families for doors and windows that you can specify for your building design.
The advantage over Revit libraries and to manufacturers allows for customization, which enables brand exposure, highlighting unique products and the possibility to cater to more specific customer needs. Furthermore this could benefit the designer by offering more specific design features, facilitate collaboration with other non-library products and improve user-experience needs.