How much detail should you include about wall, floor and roof composition at different stages?
◦ Conceptual design
◦ Preliminary design
◦ Design development
◦ Construction documentation
The conceptual design and even preliminary design does not require much detail about the materials being used for the wall, floor and roof. These stages are more to get an idea of how the building will look and they focus more on other considerations like the site, the floor plans, window and door location, etc. By the end of the preliminary design, the materials and composition should start to be a consideration. This will enable the design development to progress with all necessary information to make other related choices. By the construction documentation stage, all of the materials and compositions for the walls, floors, and roofs should be solidified because these will impact the actual construction of the project. This stage is used to see all of the final details of the design before construction begins.
You moved a design from Forma into Revit this week.
◦ What survived intact, and what did you rebuild?
◦ What does that tell you about what each tool is for?
◦ Knowing where the handoff lands, what would you do differently in Forma next time?
Many manufacturers provide Revit families for their products.
◦ What is the advantage to the manufacturer of giving them away?
◦ What is the benefit to you of using them over the generic library families?
◦ At what point does it become appropriate to switch from generic to manufacturer specific?
The core is located early and moved rarely.
◦ Why does it get fixed before most of the building?
◦ What are the consequences of a core that does not stack vertically?
◦ What did locating the core force you to change about your Week 3 layout?
It is important for the core to be placed and remain in its location at the start of the design process because the rest of the building is sort of based on this. The core requires having a shaft in the building which cuts through all of the building layers. This is not something that the design wants to deal with moving after it has been done once because it is inconvenient, and it will mess with the rest of the floor plan design. If the core does not stack vertically, there can not be one shaft that stretches from the bottom floor to the top of the building and it would instead need to be shifted. This would be the choice of a designer or architect, but it can complicate the construction of the building. I did not have to change much of my layout from week 3, it just took a lot of adjusting the shafts and making sure I was selecting the correct elements to be extending throughout the entirety of the building.
Your Insight result did not match your Forma result.
◦ What accounts for the difference?
◦ Which number would you show a client, and how would you explain the gap?
◦ Does a more detailed model automatically produce a more trustworthy prediction?
I think the difference comes from being more specific about the materials being used. In revit, we were able to select the thickness of the materials and inset more details about the assemblies. The revit model also took into account the window and balcony design where the forma only considered the WWR. Based on this, I would feel much more comfortable giving a client an estimate from revit than I would from forma - the forma ones are more arbitrary. The only way a detailed model is more trustworthy is if it is actually modeled correctly. Even though there is more that goes into the revit model and we did have to insert more values for the assemblies, if they are not modeled the way they should be, the values being presented for the carbon/from the Insight will still be incorrect.