What are the primary goals of creating a building model? Who are the key stakeholders?
The key stakeholders are the users and operators of the space as well as the builders. The primary goals of creating a building model are to visualize the final product of a building before investing in the erection of that building and to test whether the design constraints and specifications of a building are attainable.
Many door and window manufacturers provide Revit families for doors and windows that you can specify for your building design.
The advantage to manufacturers for providing these families is that they can market the most accurate forms of their products effectively and can reduce customer dissatisfaction, as customers will already have an idea of what their product will look like in use before buying it. Providing these families to virtual software also allows manufacturers to reach wider consumer bases with ease.
The benefit to using the manufacturer-provided families is that if you were to actually build something modeled on Revit, you would know the exact place to get the items needed that are exact copies of the approved model you made. There is an advantage to using them over the Revit provided library because these are real items that can be purchased, enabling an easier model to build transition.
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 enable the use of the most accurate versions of furniture, equipment, and fittings and ensure that when these items are utilized in the real world, the exact same outcome of real world application is matched with the Revit visualization of the items.