Module 4 - Points to Ponder

How much detail should you include about wall, floor and roof composition at different stages?

You moved a design from Forma into Revit this week.

◦  What survived intact, and what did you rebuild?

The general shape and floor plan of my building survived intact. The precise location of exterior features such as windows and balconies were shifted and thus had to be rebuilt.

◦  What does that tell you about what each tool is for?

This tells me that Forma is the tool used for conceptual massing and understanding how the building fits within its context. Revit is better for intricate, detailed placement of building elements and making sure all elements line up.

◦  Knowing where the handoff lands, what would you do differently in Forma next time?

I would spend less time in Forma making sure the metrics are completely correct and painstakingly measuring out distances between individual building elements. This inevitable gets scrambled during the handoff, and Revit brings with it a whole new suite of information on building materials and dimensions, which may alter the measurements and layout schema 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?

◦  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 was accounted for by the actual inclusion of building materials. The carbon analysis for this week took into account the building materials in the wall and roof assemblies, which were only approximated in the preliminary Forma analysis.

◦  Which number would you show a client, and how would you explain the gap?

I would show the Revit number to the client because it more accurately reflects the actual planned construction project. Building materials are a main driver of embodied carbon, and being able to assemble the building components with designated materials in Revit helps capture that picture more accurately.

◦  Does a more detailed model automatically produce a more trustworthy prediction?

Yes, the more detailed the model the more information you are basing a prediction off of. There may be more steps down the line which alter the outlook of carbon emissions, but a picture painted with more details included in the prediction is closer to reality, thus more trustworthy.