Overview: What and Why

You have a building. This week you make it legible to someone else.

So far your model has been for you. Now you will fit out the interiors and produce the drawing set that communicates the design to people who will never open your Revit file. You will create and control views, annotate them, build schedules that calculate, and publish a versioned model to Forma Data Management.

This is the week the course stops being about modeling and starts being about communication. A model only its author can interpret has failed at its main job. Every downstream consultant in Weeks 6 through 9 works from what you publish this week.

The schedules matter more than they look. A room schedule with a calculated field is the first moment your model stops being a picture and becomes a database that answers questions you did not manually ask.

Focus: What You Are Adding This Week

• Rooms throughout, tagged on the typical floor
• Ceilings on one typical floor, railings at all level changes
• Furniture and fixtures in two areas
• Plumbing fixtures in bathrooms and kitchens
• Materials
• A controlled view set governed by one view template
• One fully annotated plan
• Three schedules, one with a calculated field
• Two published versions with a change comparison

Design Program

• Rooms created, named and numbered for every enclosed space in the building, including units, corridors, stairs, lobbies and back of house. Tag them on the typical floor only.
• Ceilings on one typical floor, with defined structure and layers, leaving a plausible plenum.
• Railings at every balcony, terrace, stair and level change.
• Furniture and fixtures in two areas: one fully furnished example of a single unit type or workplace zone, and the ground floor active use space.
• Plumbing fixtures in all bathrooms and kitchens. These are architectural components this week. You will connect pipe to them in Week 8.
• Materials applied to exterior surfaces and to the surfaces visible in one interior view.
• One view template, applied consistently across your view set.
• Three schedules:

1.  Door schedule

2.  Room schedule including area

3.  A unit mix or space program schedule containing at least one calculated field, for example net to gross ratio, area per occupant, or percentage of total by unit type

• Extra credit: one custom component, created in place or as a new or modified family, for something your design needs that the library does not have.

Getting Started

1.  Open your Week 4 cloud model. Continue in the same model.

2.  Create rooms first, before furniture. Rooms drive your schedules, your areas and your occupancy work later. Use room line diagrams where walls do not tell the whole story.

3.  Add ceilings to the typical floor, then railings throughout.

4.  Place components in your two areas. Use copy, array and mirror rather than placing each item by hand. Use instance and type parameters to create variation without creating dozens of near duplicate types.

5.  Place plumbing fixtures in bathrooms and kitchens.

6.  Apply materials.

7.  Create your views: plans and plan regions, elevations and sections, 3D and perspective. Set view properties deliberately: visibility and graphics overrides, view range, underlay, discipline, visual styles.

8.  Build one view template from your best configured view and apply it to the rest.

9.  Annotate one plan fully: dimensions, detail lines and filled regions, text, and tags for doors and rooms.

10.  Create your three schedules, then filter, sort and summarise. Add your calculated field.

11.  Use the AI Assistant for Documentation where it accelerates repetitive work.

12.  Publish to Forma Data Management, make a small change, publish again, and compare versions.

How Detailed Should This Model Be?

Deep in one place rather than shallow everywhere. One floor of ceilings, two furnished areas and one fully annotated plan will teach you more than a thin pass across the whole building, and it is what a real team would produce at this stage anyway. The typical floor is the one that repeats, so that is the one worth resolving.

How This System Affects the Others

Your rooms become the Spaces that compute HVAC loads in Week 7. Your ceiling heights define the plenum that structure, ducts and pipe all have to share in Weeks 6 through 8. Your plumbing fixtures are the endpoints that Week 8 piping connects to.

What's Expected

1.  A fitted out model meeting the Design Program.

2.  Rooms named and numbered throughout, tagged on the typical floor.

3.  A coherent view set governed by one view template.

4.  Three schedules, including one calculated field that produces information you did not type in.

5.  One fully annotated plan.

6.  A six sheet set: ground floor plan, typical floor plan, enlarged furnished plan of one unit type or zone, one building section, one interior elevation or perspective, one sheet of schedules.

7.  Evidence of versioning: two published versions and a comparison showing what changed.

Leave plan, elevation and section views at one eighth inch equals one foot unless a view genuinely requires otherwise. Crop views to sit neatly. Do not cram plans and elevations onto the same sheet. Delete blank sheets.

What to Submit

1.  Working link to your Revit cloud model in Forma Data Management.

2.  PDF sheet set at D size, 36 by 24 inches, six sheets.

3.  Screenshot of your version comparison.

4.  Design memo of 250 to 400 words: what your calculated field computes and what it told you, and what you learned about your own design from having to document it.

Sharing Your Project

Upload to Forma Data Management, create a project link, and post it with your sheet set on the Module 5 Notion gallery page.

At Friday check in, present your typical floor plan and one other sheet. You will be asked what a contractor could not build from what you have drawn.

Points to Ponder

Please choose 3 of the 5 Points to Ponder questions and share your comments on this linked Notion page.