Which types of structural framing systems and materials are most commonly used in the US for residences? For office buildings?
The types of structural framing systems and materials in the United States for residences is wood framing, laminated veneer lumber, oriented strand board, wood I joists, concrete slabs, and steel. The types of structural framing systems and materials for office buildings is structural steel framing, reinforced concrete frames, post-tensioned slabs, and steel and concrete composite systems.
Why do different teams of designers and subcontractors link and share their models during the design process?
The advantages of linking models are allowing real-time coordination between disciplines, identifying conflicts early, reducing design errors and rework during construction, ensuring consistency across documents, and improving communication and visualization for all stakeholders. The disadvantages of linking models is requiring careful file version control, large models may cause performance issues, risk of data loss when improperly managed, coordination depends on consistent modeling standards across teams, and requires compatible software and hardware resources.
How do you think design coordination was done before we started using digital models?
Before using digital models is that there is are teams from the different disciplines and they all compare the drawings by hand, and would coordinate meetings and redline markups to communicate changes. The advantages of using digital models are avoiding human error, 3D visualization helps catch geometric issues earlier, revision tracking is easier, documentation management allows simultaneous work, and sharing via the cloud.