Gonzalo Barreto

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

• What do they need? - A building model provides a space that a variety of parties can interact and make decisions. Stakeholders can be the engineering team, architects, the building tenants/ users, and other organizations surrounding the building (forest service) and environmental regulators depending where the building is constructed.
• What do they care about most? - Stakeholders will observe how the building behaves with the surrounding environment and if it provides the uses it was intended to produce. The model also provides a way to communicate between parties which leads to a better design.

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

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 is that the Revit users/designers can directly import the families to test the aesthetics and design impact it has on the project. Creating product families can ultimately convince designers to use their products in the actual building construction.
• 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 a designer, using the manufacturer-provided families provides you a product with great detail in Revit (as manufacturers want the most realistic model possible). These families are likely much more realistic than the Revit library products and allow for a more accurate 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?