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 are to, at minimal cost, put the mental vision of a project into something tangible, be able to more precisely calculate construction costs, detect potential major design flaws prior to actual construction, and having something standard that can be readily shared among stakeholders. The stakeholders in the project would the owner(s) of the final project, project financiers (banks, funding sources, etc.), architects & designers, construction project managers and workers, clients of the owners, government officials giving approvals for the project, and for very large projects … the general members of the local community.
Most of the stakeholders need to know size of the project, the amount of useable interior space, the details of the individual spaces (how many bathrooms, how many bedrooms, how many workstations, etc.), how many entrances/exits, orientation of the building, and materials being used for each component. The project financiers may not need to know, as an example, whether the front door is made of wood or plastic, but that they would like to know that consideration has been made to keep costs at a reasonable level. Furthermore, knowledge of the materials used will allow stakeholders to assess whether any environmental and sustainability concerns have been met. Government inspectors will need sufficient information on space and materials to ensure regulations have been met. Construction managers will care about the project size/scope and construction timeline to calculate material and labor costs.
Having a digital building model that can be easily edited and shared drastically shortens for the feedback loop among the stakeholders when changes/updates are made at each stage.
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
- Preliminary design
- Design development
- Construction documentation
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?
Manufacturers use giving family models as a marketing tool. They know that architects and designers have a variety of choices when it comes to products. Therefore, getting their product out there in the modeling world increases the chances that their product will be purchased.
As designers, we minimize the likelihood of making design mistakes by using the manufacturer-provided families rather than families created elsewhere.
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?
Manufacturer-provided families will probably be more accurate descriptions of the product rather than getting the family models from a third party. A manufacturer will know the exact specifications, sizes, materials, and capabilities of family while a third party will be guessing, unless they have a manufacturer’s manual describing those parameters. A manufacturer will also have the incentive to produce accurate models because they want their product to properly fit into any project. If designers/architects can easily and accurately implement a certain company’s products in models, then the company will most likely be able to sell more of their products. As designers, we decrease the chance of errors by using the manufacturer-provided families instead of using potentially faulty third party-provided families.