Which types of structural framing systems and materials are most commonly used in the US for residences? For office buildings?
What factors determine why these are the most used materials?
Concrete and wood are the most commonly used residential framing materials, while steel is the market leader for office buildings. Wood is a stable and low-cost material. It can be used by itself or assembled into walls, floors, and roofs, an excellent material for these low levels of residences. However, for office buildings, which are usually tall and large, it is better to use a material that can withstand all kinds of extreme weather conditions. Furthermore, resistance to pests is also important, which might cause significant disruption and severe results.
Why do different teams of designers and subcontractors link and share their models during the design process?
What are the advantages of linking models?
Are there any disadvantages to linking models?
Advantages: Linking and sharing models allow all team workers to collaborate and innovate for new ideas architecturally and structurally. Furthermore, linking models could enable all designers to manage individual parts more easily and visualize structural and architectural models simultaneously. For this project, linking the model assists me to copy all floor features to the structural model efficiently. Disadvantages: If we want to change any elements within the link, we cannot directly do it. We have to make additional models to link in. Furthermore, if we remove the links, it will also remove all the annotations that are associated with the links.
How do you think design coordination was done before we started using digital models?
What advantages does doing this coordination digitally have over previous methods?
They probably have to do it by hand drawing. For example, the architectural paper lay on the bottom, and the structural model is drawn on the tracing paper. After we started to use digital models, designers could see not only 2D drawings but also 3D, which also allowed us to rotate around and visualize the entire building.