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?
How much detail should you include in your building model? How do you decide?
- As you develop your initial design?
- As you continue to iterate and develop on your design?
- What are the key stages?
- And how much detail should you include at 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
- Preliminary design
- Design development
- Construction documentation
At the conceptual design stages, not much detail should be required, merely a skeleton of a system needed to mark the general outlines of the building, and a walls and floor needed to enclose the system. At the preliminary design stage, a general thickness and material composition can be determined, even if it is not perfectly aligned with the other aspects of the design at that time. Upon further design refinement, the composition might be adjusted further to take into account thermal, cost, or aesthetic needs of the building. Finally, for construction documentation, any last changes are enacted and confirmed that the details included are noted and that construction would be possible the way things are laid out.
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?
Manufacturers can increase their brand awareness through implementation of their products in Revit, and once these templates are included in the models, it becomes more likely that the physical products will be used in the final design, increasing revenue for the company. The designer benefits through a greater variety of options available to them for modeling, enabling more robust and interesting design.
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?
The components on RevitCity.com or similar websites may be of a lesser quality or detail than those provided directly by the manufacturer, and could perhaps even have incorrect dimensions. The manufacturers may also have a much wider array of component options released from their own library rather than those that exist in the public domain.