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 goal of creating a building model is to visualize and communicate designs, coordinate between different teams, analyze function, and support construction management. A model should help architects, engineers, and builders understand the spatial relationship between boundaries, roofs, walls, and furniture. A good model also allows for proper cost estimation, scheduling, and energy & water analysis. Key stakeholders for building models are architects, engineers, contractors, facility managers, construction workers, and sustainability. After all, these stakeholders play pivotal roles in developing the building through the model. Architects and engineers utilize the model to refine the design and ensure for technical accuracy. Contractors and construction workers rely on the building model to have a proper plan of what needs to be done and how much it would cost to fulfill model. Finally, the facility manager utilizes the building model to plan for long-term operation and maintenance. While each of the stakeholder have different values in terms of the mode, they do share the end goal of ensuring a high-performance and functional building.
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
In the conceptual design, the details should keep the walls, floors, and roofs relatively simple. There should mainly be a general form and boundaries. However, during the preliminary design, more details should be included. This means that there should be a clear assembly type and approximate thickness. Through this, there is a start to understand early performance and coordination. In terms of the design development, there should be accurate material layers and dimensions for realistic analysis and cost estimation. Materials, insulation, finishes, and barriers should be defined to support precise thermal and structural analyses. This also helps with cost estimation. Of course, this expands more on the preliminary design. Finally, in the construction documentation, everything must be fully detailed and specified. Every layer, material, and thickness should be clearly defined in the model and drawing, ensuring that all information for the development of the building is communicated.
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?
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?
Getting Revit component families directly from manufacturer ensures a higher accuracy and reliability compared to downloading from online sharing websites like RevitCity.com. This is due to the fact that manufacturer families are created to reflect real-world dimensions, materials, and other data to ensure for better coordination. They ensures that the design has reliable product information. However, components from websites like RevitCity.com can be inconsistent in terms of being overly detailed, poorly parameterized, or dimensionally inaccurate. This causes for the design to be flawed as it contains a compound that might not match real data, dimensions, or materials. And because anyone can share components, the validity of these component’s design can be put into question as there is no quality assurance.