Which types of structural framing systems and materials are most commonly used in the US for residences? For office buildings?
What factors determine why these are the most used materials?
Residential houses tend to use wood most frequently in the US, as wood is a cheap and easily accessible building material that is sufficient for a typical family home. For office buildings, materials like steel and concrete tend to be able to bear more load and will last longer than a material such as wood, which would not be able to be used on the same scale as many large urban office buildings.
How do you think design coordination was done before we started using digital models?
What advantages does doing this coordination digitally have over previous methods?
I would assume that previous design coordination was likely done using physical paper and drafting tables to make blueprints and drawn models. This would definitely be a more labor-intensive method, and would make collaboration much more difficult.
At what point in the project development process should design coordination start?
Is it ever too early?
Design coordination should start as soon as the project begins. I think it is crucial to have a variety of perspectives and inputs on a project at every step of project development, particularly be representatives from different project elements to ensure that the project will run smoothly.