Working link to your Revit cloud model in Forma Data Management.
(Also shared with teaching team)
Working link to your Individual Forma Board
DF sheet set at D size, 30 by 42 inches, six sheets. Delete any blank sheets.
Screenshot of your Insight result alongside your Week 3 Forma result.
Design memo of 300 to 400 words: what survived the handoff, what you rebuilt, what assembly choices you made and why, and where Revit and Forma disagreed.
The general floor plan, position of the mechanical shaft, elevators, and stairs are the same and survived the handoff. The overall building mass also survived the handoff. What did not survive the handoff was the roof setup, space elevations, and windows. When working on the window glazing, all my window dimensions were unique, and I needed to standardise them to do glazing assignments efficiently through the grouping conventions in Revit.
Within this model, it was important to define floor, wall, and roof assemblies. The wall assemblies included two versions of an exterior wall, one for the ground floor, one for the upper floors, with a minimum R-19. For the ground floor, I chose the exterior wall that included light steel stud, wood sheathing, and batt insulation. Batt insulation was the go-to due to its high R value per square foot. For the Fremont location in the Bay, the winters do get a little chilly. Meaning the winters do become chilly, and strong insulation is needed for comfort in the residential space. This resulted in R-values being 24 for the ground floor and 20 for upper floors (since heat rises), to compensate for the slightly cooler months in winter. My 2nd exterior wall design had a similar assembly but used cladding for the exterior face. For floor assemblies, I used concrete slab and a wood finish, as resistance for those assemblies was not specified.
For the roof, a minimum of R-40 was required; I chose to do a green roof to maximize the amount of green space present on my build. To construct the insulation, I used polyiso, a widely available material to make up the largest chunk of my insulation system. Since it is a green roof, there needs to be a thick enough bedding for soil and vegetation, which can also help with insulation. And so, layered on top of the polyiso is Earth and grass.
Revit and Forma disagreed in the total carbon analysis, with the Forma design being significantly higher than the Revit one. In Forma, the total carbon was 3.07 M kg CO2e, while in Revit this value was 1.5 M kg CO2e, cutting the carbon amount in half. This is most likely due to the material selection in the Revit model, which is a far more specific and robust representation of the building, given a more accurate analysis of total carbon association. Additionally, the elevations and the space the building masses took up in Revit deviated from what was seen in Forma. One of the biggest issues I faced was placing a building pad and excavating the space because my base floor was at ground level. This elevation was not noticeable in Forma. Layer placements in Revit also differed from Forma, including my window dimensions and floor layers. In Revit, offsets were necessary to fix floor and wall overlaps.