What are the primary goals of creating a building model? Who are the key stakeholders?
The primary goals of creating a building model are to convey the most important parts of a model idea to team members as well as to visually understand how aspects like light and heat flow work. The key stakeholders in this building construction process are the client/sponsor, the project manager, the construction team, contractors, and the researchers who will use the finished building. The people involved of the development of the structure need clear understanding of what is to be built—dimensions, materials, etc.
How much detail should you include in your building model? How do you decide?
As you develop your initial design, you shouldn’t pay too much attention to detail. Instead, it should be more about getting the idea out on paper. As you continue to iterate and develop, this is when you can make adjustments to the initial plan and add detail as you see fit; being nit-picky about types of windows, nice dimension numbers, etc. The final stage should then be adding in detail components like furniture to help others who view the model to imagine the uses the space is being designed for.
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 door/window families to specify for your building design is that you are more likely to consider purchasing the actual materials from that manufacturer when the project is physically built. The benefit to the designer of using these provided families is that the they will understand the appearance and adjustability of the components. The families in the Revit library are more basic, while the manufacturer-provided families bring more life to the building design.