Why is it important to accurately model the land features of your project site with a toposurface?
- What aspects of a building design are most affected by the terrain features?
When designing a project...
- Should the building adapt to the terrain?
- Or, should you adapt the terrain to the building?
When designing a project, the building must adapt to the terrain. In order to preserve the natural environment and match the homes around you it makes sense to incorporate the existing terrain in your design. When you adapt the terrain to the building the building likely will fit less seamlessly with the environment.
What considerations affect a project team's decision-making when deciding the floor-to-floor height to use in a multi-story building?
- From a real estate developer's perspective?
- From a designer's perspective?
- From an engineer's perspective?
- From a builder's perspective?
- From an owner's perspective?
What are the advantages of stacking the levels of a multi-story building vertically?
- Can you share an interesting example of a building that doesn’t vertically stack (where the floor plates change their shaped radically between the floor levels)?
- What were the advantages or reasons for non-vertical stacking?
Why do stairs follow specific proportions with a set relationship between the tread length and riser height?
- How can building modeling help prevent the mistakes that often occur when designing and installing stairs?
Stairs need to have a consistent and set ratio of length to height because there cannot be inconsistencies in the feature. If all but one stair is the same length someone could trip and hurt themselves. by modeling the stairs before hand you can ensure the stairs will fit in your design and you will not need to altar the fixture, potentially creating a hazard.
Describe a case when it would be worthwhile to create a new custom component in Revit… How do you decide when customize versus using readily available components?
It would be worthwhile to create a custom component when the space is unique. With more unique spaces, many things may need to be made to certain specification. If this model was made using available components they will likely be less accurate leading to costly mistakes. In most cases, ready components will likely be fine, when the the build is custom to a specific situation it is worth the effort of creating your own components.