The transformative power of BIM.
◦ Which specific thing in this course could not have been done with drawings alone? Not possible with drawings alone: Comparing the two facade options. I changed the window settings and reran sun, daylight and carbon in minutes. By hand I'd have redrawn every elevation and still been guessing.
◦ Which things were harder in a model than they would have been by hand? Small plan fixes. Straightening one wall took several tries because the tool kept snapping to window edges. On paper I'd just erase it and redraw.
Your building is a set of decisions, most made before you knew enough.
◦ Which decision are you most confident was right, and what evidence supports it? Putting the bar along Adeline with the courtyard behind it. In Week 2 it had the best facade daylight (98% at VSC 27%+), the most open space (60%) and the least noise on open ground.
◦ Which would you revisit, and what would you need to know first? The 69 ft bar depth, which keeps units small (about 664 SF vs the 750 target). First I'd need the real setbacks and how much a deeper bar would shade the courtyard.
You produced roughly thirty deliverables across ten weeks.
◦ Which one taught you the most, and why? the Week 2 comparison matrix. I expected the perimeter block to win, but it had 23% more facade, the most embodied carbon and the darkest facades.
◦ Which felt like busywork at the time and turned out to matter later? Ordering the context data in Week 2. It felt like setup, but it's why this week's sun and daylight results reflect the real site.
Every model in this course was a simplification.
◦ What did your model never know about your building?
◦ At what point in a real project would those omissions become unacceptable?
What's next?
◦ Which part of this work would you want to do professionally?
◦ What is the biggest gap between what you can do now and what a practising professional does?