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 clearly communicating the design concept as well as providing a space for collaborators to build off a shared model. The key stakeholders are the architects, engineers, and the owners. They need to all be on the same page of what the final design concept will be. They care most about creating a design that satisfies all parties and having a clear idea of what will happen from the start rather than having to go back and change things later.
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?
There are a few advantages for the manufacturers. For one people are more likely to buy from the company if they are able to essentially test out how it will look before hand. Also, providing families reduces returns. If you build the model using estimates then purchase the real thing and it doesn’t fit the piece will be returned and the manufacturer will likely take on some sort of cost associated with that return. As the designer you can be more certain that everything will work when the design is build in real life. The Revit library is helpful for general guidelines but it is more helpful to be able to use what you will be using in real life.
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?
By getting Revit component families directly from the manufacturer you can be mostly certain everything will fit the way you want it to. While tools like RevitCity.com are great because they give us access to countless components to add to designs, those stock components may not match the specifications of the piece in real life. Specifications from the manufacturer allow you to work with what you will actually be using in the model.