Module 3

Why is it important to accurately model the land features of your project site with a toposurface?

• What aspects of a building design are most affected by the terrain features? The topography influences the building design significantly as the design can be modeled with more ease than changing the layout of the topography. It's better to adapt to the terrain, while using accurate building model practices like building pads, offset floors, and structural/waterproof walls that maintain the integrity of the house from the surrounding soil and exterior. The terrain features most significantly impact the design of the ground, orientations, and floor layouts.

When designing a project...

• Should the building adapt to the terrain?
• Or, should you adapt the terrain to the building?

What considerations affect a project team's decision-making when deciding the floor-to-floor height to use in a multi-story building?

• From a real estate developer's perspective?
• From a designer's perspective?
• From an engineer's perspective?
• From a builder's perspective?
• From an owner's perspective?

What are the advantages of stacking the levels of a multi-story building vertically?

• Can you share an interesting example of a building that doesn’t vertically stack (where the floor plates change their shaped radically between the floor levels)?
• What were the advantages or reasons for non-vertical stacking?

Why do stairs follow specific proportions with a set relationship between the tread length and riser height?

• There are residential stair codes that are to be adhered to in the design. Similarly, there are other pre-set rations in modeling software to account for other codes and regulations in building designs. This helps follow codes since the step of the design. Finding errors in the design step early on saves both time and money in the construction process, so building modeling software prevents errors in a good stage of the project.

Describe a case when it would be worthwhile to create a new custom component in Revit… How do you decide when to customize versus using readily available components?

It would be worthwhile to create a new component in Revit when the design and dimensions of the component are very specific to the design of the room/space in your building model. In this instance, custom cabinets would be preferable to fit the layout of the kitchen specifically but would have also been time-consuming.