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?
It’s important to accurately model these features for many reasons, including window spacing and doors. The material of the base of the house can also depend on how deep it is below the ground or if it has to be raised above it. When you have the land correct, you can design for the building that will actually be there instead of an idealized version that you have to change later.
When designing a project...
- Should the building adapt to the terrain?
- Or, should you adapt the terrain to the building?
I think that it depends on the situation. Since you can make building pads and cut out the space you need, you could make the case that just flattening out a piece of the land will do the trick. However, for other considerations, like material of the ground, environmental concerns, sun direction, earthquake risks, etc, it’s very important to design a building around these considerations to use them to your advantage rather than having to redesign after in relation to the terrain.
Describe a case when it would be worthwhile to create a new custom component in Revit… How do you decide when customize versus using readily available components?
A good case would be making a custom countertop. It’s easy to place a bunch of cabinets to lay out the base, but nearly impossible or just very time consuming to find a countertop that fits your exact needs, especially in situations like kitchens where they are never really the same. Though it doesn’t copy to other files, that isn’t a concern because it’s for a specificly designed situation. For other features, such as furnature, it’s better to use readily available components and just edit them to your needs.