Module 2 - Points to Ponder

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

• Some of the primary goals of creating a building model are to provide all parties involved in the design and construction of a structure a unified entity to visual the designs, understand spatial and structural relations, and receive a comprehensive vision of the intended final product.
• The key stakeholders are the architects, the engineers, as well as the clients. The architects and engineers need a platform to be able to readily interact and collaborate. The clients need an entity from which they can concretely visual the structure they desire.

How much detail should you include in your building model? How do you decide?

• As you develop your initial design?
• During the initial stages, it is permissible to include minimal details about the structure you are creating. This stage is mostly about experimenting with ideas and translating them into different spatial arrangement and compositions.
• As you continue to iterate and develop on your design?
• As you continue to iterate and develop your design, you should incorporate more and more details to provide a better understanding of how all elements connect and relate to one another spatial, structurally, and thematically.
• What are the key stages?
• The key stages are as follows (with iteration baked into each stage):
• Brainstorming/Experimentation
• Outlining/Design Foundation
• Dimensioning/Detailing
• Specifications/Compliance Check
• Visualizing/Storytelling
• Exporting
• And how much detail should you include at each stage?
• the amount of detail should progressively increase as you go through each stage.

How much detail should you include about the composition (layers, materials, thicknesses) of your wall, floor, and roof assemblies at different stages of your design process?

• Conceptual design
• minimal/approximate detail that provides a rough assessment of the different materials
• Preliminary design
• use consistent components that do not necessarily have to be the final materials selected, but should offer a good structural/material understanding between components
• Design development
• tweak the selected components to ensure they match the layering, materiality, and thickness of the components you desired or that were initially specified
• Construction documentation
• this is were you need to be the most detailed in your composition. Include critical information such as dimensioning to ensure that there is a complete and comprehensive understanding of your design and the individual components

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...)
• The advantage to manufacturers for providing these families is that it encourages constructors to utilize their products because they are more likely to be incorporated into the modeling of structures given the simplification of component selection during the design process. Having components that come directly from manufacturers within families reduces the amount of post modeling fabrication work required to realize designs, which saves time, which in turn saves money. The reduction in expenses incentivizes constructors to utilize the products of these manufactures.
• 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?
• As stated above, the benefit to designers from these families is making the design process far less complicated. The ease of simply selected pre-specified components such as doors and windows makes the design process more streamlined and modular as what is modeled in Revit can be directly translated to physical products.

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?

• Getting Revit component families directly from the manufacturer has the advantage of ensuring accuracy and reliability. The manufacturer is the source of the product and can provide families that are up-to-date and aligned with their specifications. Families provided by manufacturers come with complete and detailed measurements and parameters for each product which gives a more accurate representation of the components. These simplifies design iteration and analysis. While websites like RevitCity.com of an extensive library of diverse component families, there is a wider range in accuracy and reliability between each library given that they are openly sourced, and any public individual can create and post a library.