Points to Ponder - Module 2

What are the primary goals of creating a building model? Who are the key stakeholders?

• What do they need?
• The primary goal of creating a building model is to easily provide a visualize representation of a proposed project for all parties involved (owner, architects, engineers, contractors, and end-users). Each party requires a varying level of detail to fulfill their needs, which can all be met using a building model like Revit that can easily be updated with multiple design iterations.
• What do they care about most?
• Owners will typically care most about how they can sell building, architects typically care most about how it looks, engineers typically care most about how it functions/stands, and contractors care most about how it is built. In most cases, the owner is the voice of the end-user, but community meetings can sometimes be set up for people to voice their opinions on projects. In this case, the researchers using this facility would be the end users/contractors/owners and the designers in this class are the architects/engineers providing the model.

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...)
• It is advantageous for manufacturers to provide these families because their actual products can be used in designs using the software. The easily it is to pull these products into designs, the more likely it is that architects and designers will continue to call for them to be used in their projects to be constructed. More architects using it out of ease eventually means more doors and windows sold in real life, which is their end goal as the manufacturer.
• 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?
• One benefit to using these manufacturer-provided families as a designer is that you could have less change orders from the contractor later down the line. If your building is designed around real-life components and not just basic Revit components, the specs and fine details will align much better when it comes time to construct the project.

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?

• One benefit to using manufacturer-provided component families is that the space in your model will be a more accurate representation of what it will look like in real life. This allows you to model the entire project using the real sizes of objects, which could come in handy for tight spaces. Also, calling out specific objects makes your plans cleaner and easier to read and work with, as the contractor putting it together knows exactly where to buy the components from that are called for in your drawings.