Why is it important to accurately model the land features of your project site with a toposurface?
- What aspects of a building design are most affected by the terrain features?
It is important to model the land features with a toposurface accurately is because the building needs to fit well with the terrain. If a building is designed beautifully on a flat ground, it can not be applied to the real ground. The real ground needs to be simulated with a toposurface so that designers can design accordingly and excavate the land or fill the land. The levels of each floor, the usage of curtain walls, the lighting systems, the design of ramps are all affected by terrain. Besides, the project budget, the schedule of the project, the construction team of the project are all depending on the terrain as well.
When designing a project...
- Should the building adapt to the terrain?
- Or, should you adapt the terrain to the building?
What considerations affect a project team's decision-making when deciding the floor-to-floor height to use in a multi-story building?
- From a real estate developer's perspective?
- From a designer's perspective?
- From an engineer's perspective?
- From a builder's perspective?
- From an owner's perspective?
What are the advantages of stacking the levels of a multi-story building vertically?
- Can you share an interesting example of a building that doesn’t vertically stack (where the floor plates change their shaped radically between the floor levels)?
- What were the advantages or reasons for non-vertical stacking?
Why do stairs follow specific proportions with a set relationship between the tread length and riser height?
- How can building modeling help prevent the mistakes that often occur when designing and installing stairs?
The height to width ratio of stair steps is determined based on the requirements of stair slope and different types of natural human steps (step distance), which meets the requirements of safety, convenience, and comfort. Besides, the specific proportions may reduce the use of materials.
BIM have the advantage of 3D modelling that prevents the stairs from being wrongly installed. The edit of size of the existing floors or ceilings can help the stairs to rise to the upper level. The standards set to the system (like 2 times of riser+tread = 25’’/26’’) can also help to set the stairs correctly.
Describe a case when it would be worthwhile to create a new custom component in Revit… How do you decide when customize versus using readily available components?
Case: I need to design a room with 3 sides of curtain walls. For privacy considerations, I need to design a “U” shaped curtain, it’s hard to find a specific curtain in the current family with the size I desired.
In this case, I need to design a new component in Revit. Whether I should customize a component depends on the specific condition that I am working on and the requirement of the customers. If the components are not emphasized to have some properties, I would like to use the available ones.