What are the primary goals of creating a building model? Who are the key stakeholders?
◦ What does each of them need from the model?
◦ What do they care about most, and where do those priorities conflict?
A drawing is a picture of a building. A model is a description of one.
◦ What questions can you ask a model that you cannot ask a drawing?
A model is unique from a drawing in that it follows a distinct set of perameters which mkes it easy to measure and gather information such as solar potenial, shadows, and more. Modeling allows you to test multiple different sets of data on it rather than a drawing which is stagnant.
◦ Are there things a drawing still communicates better? Give an example.
Although modeling allows one to gather much more data about a given site, it often lakes personality and emotion often tied to a drawing. Drawing styles can evoke emotions about certain places or aspects of a building that a CAD model cannot. drawings can much more easily give qualitative value to a design than a model can.
This course splits the work across Forma, Revit and Forma Data Management.
◦ What is gained by using a different tool for concept, documentation and coordination?
◦ What tends to get lost in the handoffs between them?
◦ Who on a real project team is responsible for making sure nothing is lost?
Where should a building model actually live?
◦ What are the practical consequences of a model living on one person's laptop?
When a model lives on only one person’s laptop, there is a severe lack of BIM coordination between stakeholders involved in the design-to-construction process. This leads to confusion between different stakeholders and costlier and longer construction timelines. Plus, designers with diverse ideas cannot coordinate together to create a model infomed by varied perspectives.
◦ What changes when the model lives in the cloud, for the designer and for everyone else?
This allows for BIM coordination between all stakeholders and creates a more efficient, collaborative environment.
You will make hundreds of modeling decisions this quarter.
◦ Which ones are worth being slow and careful about?
Decisions that could severely impact how one experiences and interacts with a space.
◦ Which are worth being fast about, accepting that you may redo them?
Decisions that are surface level ascetical choices or ones that may be less efficient but still accomplish the same function as before.
◦ How would you tell the difference before you have made the mistake?
From experience, you rarely can. That’s why I believe that it’s better to make fast decision knowing that you often have the opportunity to quickly revert to another superior decision afterwards.