What are the primary goals of creating a building model? Who are the key stakeholders?
- What do they need?
- What do they care about most?
The primary goal of creating a building model are to create clear, replicable, and consistent designs for a building, so that all stakeholders involved have sufficient information to appropriately accomplish their role in the building. Building models are a key form of communication, so the goal is to have centralized information about the building. The key stakeholders include clients, owners, architect, engineers and contractors. Each needs instructions on how to proceed in their respective part of the building process, consistency and accountability. Owners and clients likely care the most about efficiency and cost, and ensuring that the building is built correctly the first time around. Other stakeholders likely have similar interests, but also care about safety and liability.
How much detail should you include in your building model? How do you decide?
- As you develop your initial design?
During initial design, the building model should contain all the basic components, like walls and floors, but does not necessarily need to be settled in terms of what materials and items you will use.
- As you continue to iterate and develop on your design?
As you continue to iterate and develop the design, more detail needs to be included, like the type of walls and what insulation they will have, or where windows need to be placed to maximize natural cooling, heating and ventilation. With each iteration should come more specificity in the model.
- What are the key stages?
During each stage of construction, the building model needs to be iterated. This includes planning/design, preconstruction, procurement, construction and post-construction.
- And how much detail should you include at each stage?
Each stage should come with more detail, starting with dimensions and such in planning/design, and how the project is actually being built as the project goes on.
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
- Preliminary design
- Design development
- Construction documentation
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...)
- 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?
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 the Revit component families directly from manufacturers eliminates the step of having to find real materials that are similar to the modeled ones, as the components from manufacturer provided families already exist in real life.