What are the primary goals of creating a building model? Who are the key stakeholders?
A building model tells the completely design story through various views. This story is used to convey a general sense of the design to all key stakeholders involved in the design project. Key stakeholders are typically the owners and investors, architects, general contractors, and consulting engineering teams. Because the background and level of understanding of each party and each individual can vary, the building model serves as a helpful tool to visualize what exactly the building will ultimately look like and what functions it has. Being able to see the building through 2D and 3D views allows for more comprehensive space utilization decisions to be made as design progresses. Therefore, it is especially important to accurately represent the geometry and layout of the building and include dimensions, text descriptions, and labels.
All key stakeholders care about effectively communicating their design decisions and the engineering calculations or big ideas that supports those decisions to other parties involved in the engineering, design, and construction process. This is achieved through detailed drawings that show the specific layouts of certain connection details or showing section cuts for areas in the building model where there is a large amount of information. Stakeholders are ultimately the most concerned about developing a design that ensures the safety of building occupants, but project cost and time are two key factors that are always considered in all design decisions.
How much detail should you include in your building model? How do you decide?
In the initial stages of design, it’s more important to have a high-level understanding of the basic geometries of the building or space that is being modeled. Therefore, in this stage, a large amount of detail is not necessary and may even be unhelpful. Rather, it is more important to accurately represent the locations of the walls and floors.
The further the design is developed, the more important it becomes for details to be included so that the full design story can be told. These details can include the modeling of the roof and the placement of windows, doors, and other components or equipment that indicate to others looking at the design where important elements must be placed.
Structural design is typically split into three stages:
- SD - schematic design
- DD - design development
- Permit
This design stage typically involves sketching out several iterations of the relative locations of the floors, walls, and any other key components of the geometry of the building being modeled (such as elevator shafts or stairs).
In this design stage, the details become much more important. Doors, windows, and equipment are added to provide a more wholistic understanding of what the building will look like.
In this final design stage, it is vital to include the highest level of detail in the produced model. These details can include section cuts, and in-depth detailed drawings of element and equipment connections. The goal of the model produced in the permit stage is to tell the whole story of the building such that all parties involved in the design and construction process are able to understand what will go where.
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?
Revit component families obtained directly from the manufacturer are typically more accurate to the product because they are best able to specify the dimensions, color, and sizes of what they themselves produce. Third-party websites may not be able to obtain all the requisite information due to legal or privacy issues. Furthermore, manufacturers may be able to produce a more comprehensive product family, which is advantageous if multiple components from the same family must be used in a model. Lastly, manufacturers will be able to provide updates to the Revit component families as their own R&D teams develop and modify the equipments.