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?
The primary goals of creating a building model is to visualize and help simulate the usage and operation of the physical space. When such a model is created, the client can better imagine being in the physical space when it’s constructed, and offer feedback for changes. The building model also serve to answer any structural and architectural questions, such as whether the dimension of the rooms make sense, or simulate the intake of natural lighting, the visual aesthetic of the facades etc. The key stakeholders therefore include the clients, the operators and occupants, the structural engineers and architects. The client (which can be operators and occupants) care about whether they are pleased with the design, can operate efficient and safely in the space. The structural engineers care about the safety factor, and the feasibility of adding electricity/HVAC or the energy efficiency of the building. The architect can visualize in 3D their design and whether it’s visually satisfying.
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?
It depends on the purpose of the design. For this project specially, we care the most about the dimensions and placement of the building structure and the furniture, therefore it’s important those are indicated in the plan. As I worked my way into the project, I started wanting to put windows everywhere because of the boring plain wall, then I realized in a real world scenario, having too much window might create a privacy concern. Additionally, sometimes plain walls are needed for mounting cabinets and displaying posters for example. Anything that potentially takes up the physical space, at least on the floor in this case, should be included in the building design. I imagine later in the stage, once the design is structurally approved, other items such as storage shelf, cabinet, decors will be added in the building model as they also take up the space.
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...)
- 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?
Door/window manufactures can provide the most precise and accurate model of their products, which is very helpful for designers to replicate real scenario in their model when these products will be used on the construction later. From a commercial perspective, providing these families can increase the familiarity of designers to these products, such they will know better how to use with certain door/window which lead to the actual purchase and implementation of these products in real life. If to use the families in the Revit library, they may not accurately represent the dimension or design of the door/window, which lead to different results of the real building versus the model. Additionally, if a design is centred around products that don’t actually exist in the market for building, then there may be more problems with bringing the model to life with unforeseen problems.