You moved a design from Forma into Revit this week.
My windows, walls, floor plan, elevator shaft and one of my stairs survived the handoff as they were built in Revit exactly as I designed. I had to rebuild on set of walls as it had double railings and the stairs were not connected across some levels. Additionally, I had to build a shaft for the mechanical room.
Forma is great for developing an initial building idea as the tool is very easy and quick to use. It is also very intuitive for beginners. Upon moving to Revit, I saw that there were a few technical errors carried over from Forma. This shows that Revit is the tool to develop the accurate polished building idea. It gives you a wide range of tools and materials to design the building however you like to meet specific requirements like R-value (details that were not present in Forma).
I think I would spend a bit more time syncronising my floor plan to ensure that stairs are similar throughout the building. However, overall i would spend less time on Forma and use it majorly as a design testing tool. As apart from the floor plan, alot of details had to be tweaked in Revit.
The core is located early and moved rarely.
The core is the location the building relies on. The equipment that the building needs resides in the core so it is important to set it first. It is hard to reroute a shaft around a designed building as you would often need more equipment, alot of workers, more material, it would be expensive to carry all the machinery around.
I had to make my core on my last three floors allign to my bottom floors as they were slightly off centre. This caused the massing to reduce slighly on the top levels. This helps the equipmet passs straight through the shaft.
Your Insight result did not match your Forma result.
My Revit Carbon Footprint is much lower than the Forma carbon analysis from week 3. This is likely because on Revit I have designed walls with specific materials and thickness rather than the mostly generic material types on Forma. This could allow for the specific carbon footprint to be derived. Additionally, it could be that better materials are being used in Revit to help reduce the heat flow rate which could reduce the energy use which would help reduce the building’s operational emissions. Also, before after moving to Revit, I had to reshape my building massing whilst completing the tasks, so it could be that less floor area was used in the Revit model (after constant edits) so the carbon emissions are lower. Lastly, Forma and Revit could be using different databases to calculate their emission levels which could lead to different answers.
I would show a client the Revit number as the Revit model has the specific materials related to the project as well as the shafts. This would mean the Revit carbon emission value is more accurate to the specific building you are developing. I would explain the gap by explaining the addition of specified materials pertaining to the building in Revit as opposed to Forma. I think a more detailed model produces more accurate results as you have more information about the building so you can better map its footprint.