Why is it important to accurately model the land features of your project site with a toposurface?

It is important that we accurately model the land features of our project sites, because an inaccurate representation would lead to issues in construction. This is especially important if the topography of the site varies significantly. In order for a proper foundation and base to our projects, we need to ensure accurately depicted land features. If we are unable to build a proper foundation, the remainder of the structure will be significantly impacted.

When designing a project...

When designing a project, the project should adapt to the terrain. Making significant changes to the topography or environment around the project would be very costly and not environmentally conscience. Adapting the terrain to our structure would most likely involve lots of leveling and earthwork, which would become very costly, especially if we are building in a location with significant topographic changes.

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 might be useful to create a new custom component in Revit when the space is limiting/unique in some way (i.e. a particularly small area, unique geometry in the room, etc. ). Already readily available components may not fit in the model that you are creating, and it would be worthwhile to customize a component to better fit the space.

It could also be worthwhile to create something yourself if you want it to hold specific information. Some already available components may lack meaningful information that could be useful to your design.