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?
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
During conceptual and preliminary design, low levels of detail are required as these stages of design are to layout general ideas and begin visualizing the design. During design development, higher level of details are required to accurately communicate ideas and begin finalizing plans. Construction documentation requires the most detail since this design is what will be implemented in real-life by builders/contractors.
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?
When manufacturers provide families, the designer is able to utilize the real-life details and dimensions of the component. As designers look for components to include in their design, they will probably favor components and manufacturers that provide these families to assist in more accurate designs. Designers benefit from using the actual components in their designs as it provides a more accurate design. While using Revit library components could be "good-enough" for general ideas, as more details is required, more precise components are better. Additionally, components not included in the Library could require designers to build these components from scratch, which takes additional time.
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?
Manufacturer component families are more accurate representations of the components that will be used in real-life. While RevitCity can provide a wide range of components, they may not be as detailed or have as precise dimensions as the actual component from the manufacturer. In many cases, the online sharing sites can provide components that are good enough for getting general or unique ideas down, but final designs benefit from utilizing the actual components from the manufacturer.