How much detail should you include about wall, floor and roof composition at different stages?
◦ Conceptual design
At this stage there should only be location. There isn’t a need to know the exact length/dimensions of elements. Just the sizes relative to each other and the environment. Only the form and shape of the building is here.
◦ Preliminary design
At this stage you can place the elements. You want to know basic dimensions of walls, floors, and roofs. It should still be simple, but it resembles a building.
◦ Design development
At this stage, details should be sufficient to collaborate with other disciplines like mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and structural. There should be real material and ideas of required structural sizes sufficient to create an estimated cost. The thickness and layers in each wall, floor, and roof should be established.
◦ Construction documentation
Everything should be fully fleshed out and detailed here. There will be hundreds of sheets to describe every aspect of how the building should be constructed.
You moved a design from Forma into Revit this week.
◦ What survived intact, and what did you rebuild?
Nothing survived except the form of the building. I rebuilt everything including the exterior walls, windows, living unit layouts due to poor planning. I also rebuilt the stairs which is typical due to each software’s limitations.
◦ What does that tell you about what each tool is for?
Forma is very conceptual. It helps you get a general sense of what the building will look like and where elements are placed. Its details will not transfer well and there will be physical issues. Revit allows you to add in details that show how to construct the building and if each disciplines elements will conflict in physical spaces.
◦ Knowing where the handoff lands, what would you do differently in Forma next time?
I would stay in forma longer to make sure the walls and windows are where I want. The location of elements are the most important. Those elements themselves can be changed in revit if I want to change some details.
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?
Your Insight result did not match your Forma result.
◦ What accounts for the difference?
The difference is in the material of the building. In forma it was all concrete, but in revit it was a more wood than concrete. Concrete has very high embodied carbon, so this created a drastic difference.
◦ Which number would you show a client, and how would you explain the gap?
I would show Revit’s number but I would tell them to not take it seriously because it could still change as the design changes. The gap is explained from the difference in details included in the model. Revit has thermal properties and layers defined in the walls, but forma makes very conservative assumptions like the whole wall being a thick layer of concrete.
◦ Does a more detailed model automatically produce a more trustworthy prediction?
It does if those details you added are very intentional and make it through to the final stage. If you add details as temporary substitutes to keep the model moving on, the results can easily fluctuate.