How much detail should you include about wall, floor and roof composition at different stages?
◦ Conceptual design
◦ Preliminary design
◦ Design development
◦ Construction documentation
You moved a design from Forma into Revit this week.
◦ What survived intact, and what did you rebuild?
Basic Shape, Floor layout. Rebuilt walls, roof, stairs, shaft
Forma is for fast, early massing and analysis and Revit is for building the actual, documentable building with high detail
◦ What does that tell you about what each tool is for?
Detail work should be made in Revit and the extra detail early is wasted work every time the design moves.
◦ Knowing where the handoff lands, what would you do differently in Forma next time?
Get levels, floor-to-floor heights, and the program split settled before exporting, keep the massing clean and simple, and don’t spend effort on facade or window detail that gets rebuilt anyway.
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?
It’s the stiffest, most constrained part of the building: elevators, stairs, shafts, and MEP risers all have to fit, egress rules dictate where stairs can go, and it often carries the lateral system. Everything else is arranged around it.
◦ What are the consequences of a core that does not stack vertically?
Broken egress continuity, and elevator shafts that simply can’t bend. It adds cost and complexity throughout.
◦ What did locating the core force you to change about your Week 3 layout? Forced me to adjust some of the room sizes to accommodate core.
Your Insight result did not match your Forma result.
◦ What accounts for the difference?
The gap comes mostly from inputs, not method: Forma assumed 8" concrete walls and Multifamily loads, while my Revit model uses wood-frame walls
◦ Which number would you show a client, and how would you explain the gap?
Neither as it stands. Once the building type is corrected, I would show the Revit number.
◦ Does a more detailed model automatically produce a more trustworthy prediction?
No. Detail adds precision, but my Revit model is more detailed than the Forma one, it is less trustworthy right now because the building type is wrong, interiors are missing.